Battle of the Band-AIDS
by Vast Difference
Summary: Next to practicing medicine and a certain Dean of Medicine, House's other great love has always been music. So what happens to all of our lovlies at PPTH when the curmudgeonly doctor's old rival organizes a Battle of the Bands to raise money for an AIDS charity? Read on to find out! (Takes place in late Season 4 starting in "Living the Dream." Starts cannon, but eventually AU.)
1. Chapter 1- Making the Band

**Good evening, fandom! I've been gone a long time... I wrote a little fic (that I sadly never finished) called "Baby Daddy" around '09-'10, back when my name on here was HouseCuddyDynamite, that some of you may have read if you've been around for awhile. I took a pretty long writing hiatus after my daughter was born, and when I got back into it, I was really into "Megamind." Still am, but needless to say, I went back on a major Huddy binge recently and got inspired. It may sound dumb, but I was in maaaajor denial once I found out the fate of my favorite TV couple in season 7, and I haven't seen any post-breakup episodes or ANY of season 8. I do know what happens, though, so no one will be spoiling anything for me if you would honor me with some lovely reviews. I'm just not in a place yet where I can bring myself to watch. (I know. I'm a sappy Huddy nerd.) Also, I'd love to know what message boards or communities our continually obsessive types are haunting these days... I've been out of the game way too long to know what's going on with that. Anywho... I hope you enjoy, and if the spirit so moves you, I would love some feedback :-)**

On a pleasantly warm spring morning, surprisingly enough before 10:00 AM, House sat alone with his sneaker-clad feet crossed on the top of Cuddy's desk in her perfectly decorated office at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Instead doing something constructive, though, like booby trapping the desk of his pretend enemy and boss or finding yet another new and satisfying way to embarrass her, House was reading an actual medical journal. With a spanking new copy of the _New England Journal of Medicine_ in one hand and his other adeptly spinning his cane in absent circles, a red lollipop stuck out of the side of the tiny smirk playing at the corner of the genius doctor's lips.

While it wasn't unusual for House to casually peruse the _Journal_'s contents while he was trying to solve a medical puzzle through distraction or waiting on a patient's test results, he almost never gave the philanthropy section of the periodical a second glance. He left all that touchy/feely crap to his overly caring best friend, Wilson. The grumpier doctor was glad in this one instance, though, that one of those headlines had in fact caught his attention.

House realized while sitting there that he was actually _smiling _as he re-read the article for what must have been the fifth or sixth time since the previous day. He had spent a sufficient amount of time plotting his next move ever since he had first read about his longtime professional rival, Dr. Phillip Webber, putting together an AIDS fundraiser. Normally, the diagnostician would have just sneered in his Housian way and continued on to the next page. But not for the first time in their lives, Webber was stepping on his toes; encroaching on _his _turf. Webber was putting together the New England area medical community's version of Battle of the Bands, with all of the profits set to fund AIDS-related charities in New England's more impoverished urban areas.

Webber's nauseatingly, beady-eyed smile covered the entire top half of one page of the magazine as he faux-casually wrapped his arm around an unremarkable acoustic guitar. The article described how Webber had a so-called "life-changing experience" when he started working with troubled kids in his area, doing tutoring and teaching guitar to youngsters in his spare time at a local youth center. So many of the center's young charges had been affected by the disease, he had said that he wanted to do something to help. _I'm sure that was a pure motive_, House scoffed internally. _Probably "helped" a bunch of kids from drug-ridden neighborhoods and broken homes about as effectively as he "helped" me right out of Johns Hopkins._

On one hand, that precipitating event could be painted as the catalyst for many of the hardships that House had endured since his early days in medical school. He knew on some subconscious level, however, that he would not trade his time in Michigan for finishing his tenure at Hopkins if he were given the choice. And the person who incurred at least a portion of those sentiments was the one whose office he had currently seized. Not so subconsciously, the invading doctor was hoping that his epic plan to scalpel Webber back down to size would have the possible added bonus of upping his chances to continue to pull Cuddy a bit closer. Of course, while House attempted that, the two stubborn doctors would continue to engage in the familiar psychological foxtrot where they _pretended _to push the other away.

The sound of the office door opening snapped House out of his introspection, and in the second before he looked up he quickly hoped that he had staved off Cuddy's entrance long enough for the majority of his minions to arrive.

"What are you doing in here? We both just got a 911 page from Cuddy," Cameron explained as she eyed her former department head skeptically.

"Actually, you got a 911 page to Cuddy's _office._ Which doesn't necessarily mean that Cuddy was the one who paged you. Duh!" House answered condescendingly, pointing to himself with his cane.

"Okay then… if you wanted us for a consult or something, why wouldn't you just have us come up to _your _office or the DDX room?" Chase wondered, annoyed at the interruption of a rare meal he and Cameron had common free time to share in the cafeteria.

"Good question," Wilson piped in as he entered the office during Chase's speculative comment, immediately looking around the office. "Where's Cuddy?"

"Geez, why is everyone so concerned with Cuddy's whereabouts all of a sudden? She's a busy woman… with huge responsibilities all over the hospital," House responded dryly. "And… a huge ass. But that's beside the point." Cameron and Chase just shook their heads and decided to have a seat on the couch; obviously they would be there long enough to warrant sitting down.

"Whatever it is you're doing, make it quick. I was with a patient," Wilson added, annoyed.

"Anyone that's going to die in the next fifteen minutes?"

"Well, no, but…"

"Then it can wait. This won't take long," House interrupted as he pulled a familiar orange bottle from his bottle and dry-swallowed a couple of Vicodin.

"What won't take long?" Thirteen asked casually, walking into the office with Kutner and Taub trailing behind her.

"Is the Diagnostics Department invading Cuddy's territory?" Taub inquired suspiciously, observing both Cuddy's absence and the collection of House's fellows, past and present.

House scoffed, "Trust me, if I were planning any kind invasion of Cuddy's territory, I wouldn't have invited an audience," he thought a second and added, "But I might film it for educational purposes." Wilson rolled his eyes at his friend's latest innuendo regarding their boss, but he was interrupted by even more visitors before he could open his mouth to respond.

"What are we filming?" Forman wondered aloud as he entered. He was followed into the room by a very confused looking Amber Volakis.

"And why the hell am I getting paged? I don't even work here." Upon noticing Wilson standing near Cuddy's desk and House's presence, the conniving red-head made a point to flirtatiously saunter over to him. "Hey, baby," she said too sweetly, giving him a fairly chaste peck on the lips. "Are you the one that paged me?"

Eying House with a devious smile after greeting her boyfriend, he returned his own challenging glare at Amber. Wilson glanced ceiling-ward at the exchange between the two which they assumed he hadn't noticed. Evidently the pair's recent foray into changing bedpans as Cuddy's punishment for not adhering to the terms set forth for them to "share" Wilson had failed to alter their behavior much.

"Nope, that would be this one," he answered, indicating House. "He's being all… cryptic and House-ish.

"Yeah, none of us have any idea why we're here," Kutner supplied. "Why _are _we here, exactly?"

"I realize it may come as a shock to you, but we are doctors, and this is a hospital," Foreman stated condescendingly. "And we all have more important things to do than stand around waiting for…"

"Oh, hold that thought… I think I hear the mating call of our fearless leader!" House declared facetiously, dramatically cupping his non-cane hand around his ear.

Most of the room's occupants listened briefly and then displayed an assortment of furrowed eyebrows and puzzled visages. But soon enough, they heard it unmistakably.

"HOUSE!" Cuddy bellowed furiously through the waiting room of the clinic. When her loudly clacking stilettos finally reached her own office, she flung open the doors unapologetically and started into exactly the kind of tirade that her star employee expected. He smiled.

"House, what the HELL?!" she angrily yelled. "You page me to your office. I stand around there waiting for almost ten minutes and then I get another page from my OWN office, and now I come down here and it's full of people, none of whom I called or paged. This…" she indicated with a broad gesture, "… is NOT a conference room. This is MY private office, and I do the paging."

"But Cuddy-buns, if I had paged everyone while you were in here, you never would have let me use it for my meeting," he whined.

"First of all, you have your own office…"

"Not big enough for all these people."

"The DDX room…"

"_Clearly _isn't as comfortable as these posh, administrative surroundings."

"And get your damn feet off of my desk."

"Yes, mistress," House grumbled in the familiar timbre of Lurch from the_ Addams Family_, but he did acquiesce and slowly moved his legs back onto solid ground.

All of the other doctors in the room had been temporarily stunned into silence by the rapid-fire argument between the unruly head of diagnostics and the Dean of Medicine. As usual, cutting the tension between the two, sexual or otherwise, would necessitate the likes of a machete.

"What?" House and Cuddy stopped to ask the others in unison, turning their attention to the group when they realized that they were being regarded like a zoo exhibit.

Wilson cleared his throat in such a way to represent the whole group and said, "I don't know who else we could possibly be waiting for, so can you make us privy to your latest bout of insanity so we can all get back to work?"

"Of course, Wilson. You know how much I value time management in the workplace…"

"Exactly... not at all," Cuddy quipped, moving to sit on the arm of the couch near Cameron and crossing her arms. Everyone else looked at House to get on with it.

"Like I was trying to say before I was so very rudely interrupted…" the ill-tempered doctor began, casting a pointed look at his boss, "… I have come across a philanthropic and PR goldmine for our fine institution of medicine."

"Since when do you give a rat's ass for anything that could be categorized as _charity_?" Thirteen asked brazenly.

"Or public relations," interjected Cuddy, "Unless you're forging _bad _ones to make me look ridiculous."

"Only when it's really, _really_ cool. And a competition. And you get a free weekend in Atlantic City," House explained, holding up the article. "Andyou get to hold _really_ embarrassing auditions with hospital staff."

"Auditions?" Wilson inquired curiously. House held up the magazine as if to say "duh," and the oncologist reached for it since he was standing the closest. Studying the headline on the cover, he asked "Battle of the Band-AIDS?"

"Yup. Bands made up of doctors playing mostly mediocre covers of 'Sweet Home Alabama' to raise money for AIDS and making their hospitals look awesome with their benevolent spirits. And in a few rare cases, _seriously _rock."

"And how exactly does this involve all of us?" Thirteen asked warily, indicating the group with her hand.

"Well, a chunk of you were just put through a trying and humiliating competition for employment… by some guy who I hear can be a real asshole… with stellar results," House explained to Thirteen, with acknowledging glances at Kutner and Taub. "One of you not so much…" he directed at Amber, to which she responded with narrowed eyes, "… but not for lack of _trying _to go all 'Grand Theft Auto' and run your competition off the road," the doctor finished in a rare concession.

"Um… thanks?" Amber responded incredulously.

"Don't get used to it," he muttered. "And I happen to know that you three…" the diagnostician began, indicating his former three fellows, "…all have backgrounds in music. And collectively, you annoy me far less than a lot of other people I know."

"And me?" asked Wilson, though he already had an idea of how his best friend would respond.

"The rest of the room may not have heard about your escapades in Community Theater and summer stock… a long time ago, in a land far away… but then again, they don't have the advantage of going far enough back with you to know all of that seriously embarrassing crap," the oncologist's infuriating friend shared enthusiastically.

Wilson covered his face with his hand, but at the same time realizing that some of the room's occupants, the women particularly, seemed to be quickly reevaluating their opinions of him. Amber had raised an eyebrow and taken on a smirk that spelled ridicule for him later in the evening. Cuddy had also covered her mouth, but it was because she was trying very hard not to laugh, and Cameron's reaction was similar.

"I'm sure it must have helped with the ladies… being one of the few straight guys in musical theater productions…" Taub offered patronizingly.

"House… you are in _so _much trouble…" Wilson began with an accusing finger.

"Trouble…. right here in River City?" he responded quickly.

"House…"

"Trouble with a capital 'T'…" Kutner uttered with a snicker.

"… that rhymes with P…" supplied Cuddy giddily before she realized what she was saying.

"…and that stands for 'Pool'!" finished Cameron and Chase simultaneously, half laughing and half singing.

"I've seen the VHS of him as Harold Hill…it isn't half bad…"

"You must have gone through my stuff and just stolen it! I never showed it…"

"How does this even remotely surprise you, Wilson? He pulls stuff like this all the time," reminded Forman.

"It also isn't half good," House continued, completely ignoring the two doctors' exchange, "But you were one of the only people in it who didn't completely suck. And I think I've embarrassed you sufficiently… and since I've already heard you sing, you can forgo the audition. You're in," stated House with a point in Wilson's direction that was meant to mirror his previous gesture. "And four more of you also just outed yourselves as theater nerds through spontaneous quotation," he added, pointing fleetingly at Cameron, Chase, Kutner and Cuddy.

"And yet, strangely, none of us have agreed to _anything_," Wilson reminded him.

"But you'll do it. Since when do you ever say 'no' to me about anything?"

"I'll do it," Kutner piped up with feigned nonchalance.

"You sing?" asked House, allowing Wilson a temporary reprieve in order to assess some fresh meat.

"Eh, I mean, a little. I'm more of an instrumental guy."

"Playing…"

"I can fool around on the drums, but mostly saxophone."

"Barry?"

"How'd you know?" the eager fellow mused.

"Lucky guess. You any good?"

"Jazz band in high school. We made it to state my senior year…"

"Fascinating. You've earned yourself an audition. Moving on to the rest of my newest victims… Taub and Thirteen… go."

"Go with what? I don't play anything and I can't carry a tune to save my life," Thirteen responded, almost a little too quickly for House's liking.

"Shame… we could have used a smokin' hot girl singer. I wonder where we'll ever find one of those?" he asked somewhat rhetorically, but the subtle sidelong glimpse he sent Cuddy wasn't lost on her in the slightest. Her eyes widened enough that he knew she had noticed, but he simply smirked and decided to save his best cards for the last proverbial hand.

Cameron, mistakenly but not surprisingly thinking the look was directed at her, stuttered in response, "I mean, I'm a decent enough singer… I was in choir… but I'm definitely not 'front woman' material. Background vocals, sure."

"And clarinet," House added.

"You remembered that?"

"I remember a lot of things. Don't read too much into it," he dismissed, and then continued with a more sincere air, "Think you could handle some sax? They aren't that different."

"Maybe… if Kutner can help me out a little…"

"I can sing," Amber asserted coolly. "I also wouldn't belong out front… but you can put me down for some background vocals as long as my boyfriend is going to be in this thing anyway."

"I still didn't say I would be…" said boyfriend tried to interject, but House didn't allow him to complete his thoughts.

"You're readily admitting to not being the best of the best at something? Maybe we need to check you for head trauma. Haven't walked in front of any busses lately, have you?"

Amber rolled her eyes. "I'm fully aware of my abilities, or lack thereof, in different areas. If I tried to sell myself as some kind of singing prodigy, which I'm not, I would be setting myself up for complete humiliation."

"Right… because trying to earn a spot on my team means that you're vehemently opposed to complete humiliation," retorted House. Amber opened her mouth, then closed it, and finally just scowled at the man that could have been her boss. Finally rising from Cuddy's chair to round the desk and take a seat on the front of it, he aimed the tip of his cane at Taub and proceeded to point it like a spotlight. "I never did hear from you. Any mad skills?"

"Not unless you count the two years of torture I put my parents through with the oboe in junior high."

The diagnostician tried to stifle a genuine laugh. "Wow. I suppose I should have seen that one coming mile away. Well… you're pretty good at arguing and pretending to be important. You might make an adequate band manager… along with the tone deaf one over there," he nodded towards Thirteen. "And both of you do have a way about you, although it's inexplicable for you, Taub, that seems to attract really hot nurses that could probably double as roadies and groupies."

"Um. I guess?" his shortest fellow answered tentatively. Thirteen shrugged her indifference but gave a cursory return nod.

"Cool. I'll let you the rest of you more musically inclined folks know when I devise a sufficiently entertaining and demeaning means of auditioning for a coveted space in my medically musical super-group. Or musically medical?" he thought to himself, looking up and tapping his chin more for effect than actual pondering.

"You haven't asked me or Chase for a run-down of our musical abilities yet…"

"Because I already know them," House answered easily. He cane-spotlighted his most arrogant fellow and started, "Attended the prestigious High School of the Performing Arts in New York City for a full two years… songwriting and rapping. Which probably means you're at least adequate on the piano and/or drums. And as for the Aussie…" he continued, "Good violinist, above average singer, competent guitarist and some piano. You're the only other one besides Wilson I'm confident enough to spare from the pain of auditions."

"And what about my humiliation?" Chase asked knowingly, realizing that his skill set didn't guarantee a bypass from House's special brand of torture.

"Oh, I'm sure I'll find other ways to debase you along the way. Why waste my time and yours when musically we both know you're qualified to perform?" Chase gave his assent with a small smile. He wondered when his ex-boss would decide to pounce.

Cuddy had watched the entire exchange carefully, not without a healthy amount of curiosity and carefully guarded amusement. While still having a minute chance of escaping House's game with her dignity somewhat intact, she decided to usher the motley hospital crew out of her office.

"Ok House, playtime is over. Go ahead and set up your auditions and do whatever you're going to do for this benefit… you have my blessing to put the hospital's name on it as long as whatever publicity you're putting out there is actually _good _publicity. And it will be on _your _time, not on _my _time…" Cuddy paused momentarily when she noticed him "blah, blah blah"-ing silently into the air, but he stopped and gave her a tightlipped attempt at an innocent smile when he recognized that he was caught. "I appreciate that it will probably be a huge stretch for you. But unless you want me to pull the plug on your little band… literally and figuratively… for once in your life, _behave_." she lectured typically. "Everyone else, back to work."

**A/N: I promise no specific timeline for updates, but I'll shoot for every week or two. Part time stay-at-home mom of an extremely precocious 3 year old girl and part-time private music instructor here... my daily writing time is limited and never guaranteed! Also, you can assume basic cannon until "Living the Dream," but it will get pretty AU from there. I may include some elements from future seasons if/when it gets to that part of the timeline. Also, I'm not killing anyone off in this one. Not Amber, not Kutner, not Wilson. I like all three of them... well, I may sort of love to hate Amber... but I want this to be somewhat of an ensemble piece, so I'm keeping everyone around :-D**


	2. Chapter 2- The Voice

**Happy Friday, friends! Here's the next installment! And I'd like to take a moment to thank all of my wonderful Ch. 1 reviewers for their awesomeness... it was a nice welcome back into writing after my hiatus and a huge fire-lighter under my booty for writing this week :-D So, shout-outs to: lenasti16, liljunkie, JLCH, IHeartHouseCuddy, OldSFan, Abby, HuddyGirl, Alex, and my two Guests! **

**Also, last time I forgot:**

**DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the characters from "House, M.D." They are sadly property of David Shore, whose abuse of Huddy it will take years of reparations to rectify in fanficiton form.**

House remained in Cuddy's office in spite of her directive, smiling in that insincere and infuriating way that always made her vacillate between smacking him and wanting to kiss him. Thankfully, though, the remainder of the group began filing out of her office and getting back to their regularly scheduled hospital programming. Unfortunately, the administrator's most annoying employee apparently showed no intent to follow them.

"What part of 'back to work' are you having a problem with?" Cuddy asked him casually while she breezed past his self-appointed post leaning on the front of her desk. She attempted to busy herself by doing some filing.

House made a fairly grand gesture of sitting down at one of the chairs in front of her desk, obviously getting comfortable for an expected lengthy stay when he relaxed down into the seat and crossed his feet at the ankles on the ground.

"Actually, you said 'everyone else, back to work.' Since when do I fall in the same category as 'everyone else'?" he questioned flippantly

"Since never, but in this particular case I was actually including you with the group, uninvited by me I might add, to exit my office en masse." House put the red lollipop back in his mouth that had been taking a vacation in his hand while he held court with his hastily assembled audience. Slowly, he swirled his tongue around it as he regarded his boss's tightly-skirted rear, which was conveniently in his direct line of vision, while she maintained her pretense at filing. When Cuddy gathered from both the lack of limping gate and sounds of the door that her star doctor still remained in his spot, she turned around. He removed the lollipop from his mouth and gave her the most gradually suggestive smile he could muster.

"_No_," Cuddy responded pointedly, walking back to her desk at a deliberately clipped pace.

"What do you mean 'no'? I haven't even asked you anything yet," House stated innocently.

"But I know what you're thinking."

"So now in addition to your vast talents of pushing paper and bossing people around, you've added telepathy to your repertoire?"

"Pretty sure I don't have to be telepathic to know what's going through _your _head right now," replied the administrator while she feigned business at her desk.

"Humor me then, oh Cuddy the Clairvoyant."

"You're imagining me in lingerie and thigh highs, wearing stilettos, spread-eagle on my desk."

"WOW. Now _that_ is talent… right on the nose, except for the last part." Cuddy looked up hesitantly, but was immediately sorry when House added, "I was actually picturing you _bent over _your desk."

"You're hilarious," she dryly returned.

"Let's go pick out some lottery numbers, and then we can quit this lousy healing the sick and supervisory stuff for good."

"And then there's the whole thing about you wanting me to sing in your band," Cuddy added with a raised eyebrow, still not making eye contact with House.

"Oh, _that_… oh, you meant _that _head!" he sputtered maniacally, unabashedly gesturing to his crotch. "Ha, I see what you did there."

"The answer's still no, House. You have my full cooperation as the head of the hospital for this project, but that's all."

House had expected Cuddy to resist his invitation to be part of the group since the idea was merely a flicker in the back of his mind. He had not, however, anticipated the way in which she had so coldly shut him down, and with such an air of finality. Usually the exchanges between the two of them left an air of palpable electricity in the atmosphere that begged for the progression of give and take; in this case, there seemed to be no room to inch, let alone wiggle.

On the rare occasions when House allowed himself to remember the layered history between himself and Cuddy, especially sans alcohol, he couldn't help but wonder what had caused such a dramatic shift in her personality and priorities over the years. House always accepted that he was a sarcastic asshole, if a great deal more charming and mildly personable one, before his infarction. His descent into the realm of completely intolerable bastard after his leg, therefore, surprised no one, himself included.

Once upon a time, in contrast, the overworked brunette before him held a passion for medicine nearly equal to the one she displayed for music. Coincidentally, it had been that period of her life, during undergrad, when her path had crossed that of an older medical student who enthusiastically shared her interest in both pursuits. He could still see her in his memory; a long mane of unruly curls, leather pants and tight shirts that left nothing to the imagination. Sometimes she sang with a second-rate bass guitar slung around her slightly curvier frame, which she played competently, but House's favorite view of her in that setting was always the one where she sang her complicated soul out into the microphone in her pleasantly raspy alto, almost like she was devouring it.

Finally looking up long enough to notice the gaze House had trained on her that somehow managed to be incredibly focused but simultaneously absent, Cuddy instantly felt uncomfortable under his visual scrutiny.

"I'm pretty sure we're done here. So how about you find someone else's time to waste, or… I don't know, go check on your patient?"

Snapping out of his atypically unguarded introspective stupor and hoping that he wasn't visibly drooling, he fished his pager out of his pocket to double check it. Fixing it unnecessarily closely with one eye, he declared, "No need! No 911's from the ICU desk or my team, so I assume that Dr. Brock Sterling is still boringly comatose."

"I still can't believe you kidnapped him!" she said with aggravation, but corrected herself quickly. "Wait a second… what am I saying? Why wouldn't I believe that you, of all people, would do something unbelievable?"

"Good question! I'm frequently unbelievable… in a pleasant variety of contexts. But you already knew that." Cuddy threw him a warning scowl, daring him to go "there."

"Your endless list of shenanigans in the last few days almost cost the hospital its stellar accreditation rating… you could have put me in a _terrible_ position with the board if we had gotten any violations. And on top of that, you have the audacity to haul your whole haphazard entourage into _my_ office, call a meeting, declare you're taking on a charity project on behalf of the hospital, require my support as your _boss_ for said project, insult me, sexually harass me, and then expect me to _participate_?"

"See? Unbelievable!"

"And high."

"Always!"

"No, I mean actually high. Like you must have gotten your hands on some good shit, locked yourself in the staff washroom on the third floor and smoked the whole bag."

"Just like the good old days in the band, right?"

And there it was. The cat wasn't merely dragged out of the bag, but outright yanked, spitting, sputtering and clawing its discontent. She laid her head in her hands and sighed. So they were going there after all.

"I already told you no."

"Even though technically, I never really asked you."

"But you already admitted that you were thinking it."

"Ok, so I was thinking it. Doesn't mean I thought you'd agree to it after… everything," he uncomfortably admitted. "Doesn't mean that _I _still wouldn't want you to be part of it, either." There was an awkward pause. "Why did you quit all of it?"

At any given time, there were many things between the oddest non-couple at Princeton Plainsborough; a paradoxical cocktail of respect, lust, secrets, protectiveness, animosity, fondness, sexual tension, and exasperation. Silence was a rarity when the two were together and nearly always dangerous. It left House and Cuddy to their own thoughts on the subject of one another, the realities of which created equal apprehensiveness.

Finally, the woman succeeded in meeting House's eyes. "It just got too busy with the whole 'becoming a doctor' thing. Unlike you, some of us actually did have to study," she deflected.

"I studied!"

"I should have been more specific… studied _textbooks_. You passed off ogling co-eds' asses as studying anatomy."

"Oh come now, it wasn't just ogling. I'm a hands-on type of learner."

"I remember," she retorted a bit sadly.

"It wasn't all bad," he offered in a rare moment of unguarded sincerity.

"No, but a lot of the parts that _weren't _amazing… which were a lot of the _non_-hands on parts… tended to incur a lot of damage." _Emotionally and property-wise_, she added mentally.

"Not the music."

Cuddy allowed a small smile. "No, not the music."

"What do you say then? Can we give the band thing the old _school_ try just one more time?"

"Do you promise to keep your hands to yourself this time?"

"No…"

"What about trying to treat me with at least a shred of respect in front of everyone else?"

"The neighbors will talk!"

"Ok, what if I just settle for not being consistently humiliated in front of my employees… on my own personal time, I might add?"

"Seriously, Cuddy… it's like you don't even know me. I'm hurt. _Ouch_."

But then she gave him _that_ look; one that she had directed at him only a handful of times after college, one that grudgingly conceded her vulnerability.

He sighed. "Fine. I'll _try_. But I make no guarantees."

"I can live with that. We'll give it a shot in the name of helping AIDS patients. Which reminds me… what's your _real _reason for wanting to do this whole thing? I know the philanthropy angle definitely wasn't the cause, and I sincerely doubt you would go through all the trouble of being around people you work with in your free time just to 'seriously rock' and get a free trip to Atlantic City. Especially the second part… you have Wilson for that."

Most opportunely, or not so much in Cuddy's case, House's pager picked that precise moment to call him away with a 911 from Chase.

"Oops, look at that… duty calls!" House declared cheerfully as he stood up. "We'll have to continue this rousingly meaningful conversation later. I'm guessing my comatose soap star finally did something interesting… like wake up." He shrugged. "Or code… I'll find out soon enough."

"House…"

"Later, Joan Jett!"

In his haste, House had carelessly left his copy of the _New England Journal of Medicine_ on Cuddy's desk, open to the pages of the action-inspiring article about Battle of the Band-AIDS. Curiosity understandably piqued about her genius doctor's latest impromptu obsession, she started to read. Not surprisingly, less than halfway through the first paragraph, she had the two-word answer to her questions regarding House's perceived motives: Philip Webber.

**A/N: As you can see, I'm messing with final canon for House and Cuddy's backstory. I don't feel that weird about it, though, since this story begins in season 4 when the only thing we really knew about their past was they both went to Michigan and they had a one-night stand. So I'm embellishing for my artistic purposes :-D**


	3. Chapter 3- Lip Service

**Happy Thursday, readers! This is kind of a shorter, transitional installment... the next one will be longer. I would like to send shout-outs to my lovely reviewers who have left kind words since last week: JCLH, IHeartHouseCuddy, lenasti16, OldSFan, HuddyGirl, Alex, linda12344, and the Guests! Your support is so very much appreciated! (And stay tuned for a few A/N's at the end of the chapter if you want to help me out with something.)**

By the end of that week, House had diagnosed Dr. Brock Sterling, or Evan Greer as he was known outside of _Prescription, Passion_, with an allergy to Tonic water and sent him back to an artificially bountiful life of Soap acting. Since that left him and his team case-less for the weekend, he had decided that it would be a great opportunity to hold his first round of Band-AIDS auditions.

Rather than disrupt traffic in Cuddy's office again and risk her very tentative agreement to take an active role in the group, House announced via email that everyone should meet at Wilson and Amber's apartment on Saturday night at 8:00 to begin singing auditions. The pair was more than a little irked upon reading the message, since House had failed to ask if they minded him using their place.

"Well, I could hardly have everyone showing up at my door, could I?" he had demanded of a very annoyed Wilson over lunch that Friday in the hospital cafeteria.

"I don't see why not, it's not like most of them don't already know where you live. Most of them have been there at one time or another," House was reminded by his friend.

"Yeah, but if I _invite_ them over once, they might think they can make a habit out of it. Cuddy and Cameron already assume that it's part of their job to barge in unannounced to 'check on me' periodically, and by default you basically have an all-access pass. The last thing I need is Foreman suddenly wanting to stop over for a beer or Kutner asking to catch a baseball game on my awesome flat screen."

"First of all, I can't see Foreman _ever_ stopping in for a beer just for the hell of it. And how do you know Kutner even likes baseball?"

"He tries to make small talk with me about the Philly's once in a while. If I'm in an unusually benevolent mood… occasionally I humor him."

"Conversations with your team that might possibly be construed as personal? Is there a hidden camera in here?"

"You're adorable," the more sarcastic doctor deadpanned. "Besides, your place has more room than mine anyway." Wilson just rolled his eyes and took another bite of his Panini.

"Yeah, yada yada, whatever. I don't want people at my apartment. You win," House conceded, typically stealing some potato chips off of his best friend's plate.

As they were eating, House noticed Taub walk into the room and scan it. Seeing his boss, the future band's newly appointed manager walked over to the table and started to speak, but House beat him to it.

"If you're here because we might have a patient, or Cuddy's looking for me, turn around and pretend you didn't see me."

"No, this is actually about the band."

"No matter how much you beg, we are not adding an oboe," retorted House condescendingly.

"I'm not here about instruments. All this paper work you wanted me to fill out to enter the competition… did you read any of it?" Taub asked.

"Of course not. That's why I hired a band manager… so I don't _have_ to readthe paper work."

"But there are some things here in the fine print that I think you may want to take a look at before you decide if you really want to…"

But House quickly interrupted, "If you can't handle filling out some first grade level, cut-and-dry form, I'll have you demoted down to the ER and I'll bring Cameron back on my team. She always was the best at that administrative assistant-y stuff… not to mention _much_ easier on my eyes."

"But there's this stipulation about volunteering…" Taub started to explain, but his boss broke in again.

"Just fill out the online application and get the thing sent in. We'll hash out the particulars later. I _did_ read enough in the magazine to know that the entrance deadline is just over a week from now, and I know that you don't want to be responsible for the limited ten spaces already being filled because _you _were dragging your feet." Unlike his irascible friend, Wilson paid enough attention to Taub's observations to realize that House's impatience for the necessary function of a paper trail in his daily life could be problematic in this instance.

"Let me see that," the oncologist said, grabbing the hard copy out of Taub's hand. After skimming it briefly, his eyes grew wide and he addressed his friend, "House, you really do need to read this. If I'm understanding this right, everyone in the band has to put in a certain number of volunteer hours with underprivileged youth in order to participate in the competition. 'No exceptions.' " Wilson pointed to the bold letters toward the bottom of the sheet. Snatching it out of his hand, House finally saw it for himself. He frowned, quietly thinking for a moment.

"Fill out whatever you need to fill out, say 'yes' to whatever they want us to say 'yes' to, and make sure it's sent electronically by the time you leave today."

"But…"

"_Do it_.

"Ok… but when you actually have to follow through on this down the line, don't say I didn't warn you. And I have a witness," Taub added, indicating Wilson.

"Fine. Am-scray. We're trying to eat here."

The shorter doctor gladly hustled out of the cafeteria doors and away from his cranky supervisor to complete his assignment.

"Are you _sure _you know what you're getting into with this? I know you definitely don't have any intention of doing volunteer hours… and how do you know you can get everyone else to do theirs?" Wilson questioned, aggravated. "And even if they're willing, how will they fit it into their schedules?"

House appeared to be deep in thought, genuinely perplexed by the new obstacle for his potential music group. Finally, he mused, "I always find a way to be the exception for the 'no exceptions' provision. That expression just begs for an opportunistic guy like me to come along sniffing for loopholes."

"And how often are your loophole-sniffing expeditions _not_ enabled by Cuddy in some way? She isn't running this. Like it or not, House, you may actually have to play by the rules like everyone else this time." His friend shot him a look, and Wilson decided that it was time, at least temporarily, to drop the subject. "So, um… back to Saturday… we won't be staying too long at our place, right? You said that's where everyone would be coming to meet up _before _the audition."

"Don't get your boxer-briefs in a twist. We won't be there long enough for anyone to get loaded and puke on your carpet and freak out your terrifying girlfriend. There thankfully won't be any carpet where we're going by the time people get to the puking stage."

"A bar?" Wilson asked suspiciously.

Pointing at him and smiling patronizingly, House mused, "You're quick… that's why they pay you the big bucks, isn't it?"

"How are you going to have singing auditions at a bar?"

"I take back what I said. You're an idiot… and Cuddy should take back your salary for that level of idiocracy."

The oncologist thought for a moment. "Oooohhh," he finally drew out comprehendingly. "I do feel like an idiot. No better combination for public humiliation and singing auditions than karaoke!"

Smiling slightly but legitimately, House overdramatically parroted, "Karaoke!"

**A/N: Ok, so a couple of things. 1) A few people have wondered about so many members of House's inner circle being musically inclined. I know the way I'm approaching this may seem a bit too coincidental, but there is actually some method to my madness in this case. A great big heart-shaped Huddy cookie goes to the peeps that figure out what I'm doing :-D 2) I would like some feedback for how I will approach some upcoming facets of the story, which I would either welcome in reviews or PM's. I keep going back and forth between keeping all of the music that I will mention in real time for this story, which would mean 2008 or before, or including more modern selections, as well. In order for my head-cannon to make sense, this story does take place in 2008, but how do people feel about using more current songs, but pretending that they were just out then? I honestly can't make up my mind. It doesn't bother me when I read it in other people's stories, but I'm vacillating ridiculously when it comes to my own. Opinions? Ideas? Thanks!**


	4. 4- PPTH's Got Talent

**Good evening, all! Here's the next installment... a bit longer than the last one. Stay tuned after the chapter if you want to give me some musical input for upcoming plot points :-D Special thanks to all of my lovely chapter 3 reviewers: IHeartHouseCuddy, lenasti16, linda12344, Abby, HuddyGirl, Alex, and my Guests!**

Cuddy internally chastised herself practically the whole way to Wilson and Amber's that Saturday night. For the life of her, she couldn't figure out why she had allowed House to talk her into taking part his amateur music antics with the rest his patch-work gang of employees and friends. _Well, friend_, she thought to herself. Wilson was the only one who truly fit into that category; she knew none of the others came close.

_And what exactly are he and I to each other now_? Cuddy wondered. _Boss and employee? No, more than that. But not exactly friends, either. _She tried not to think about it very often. At one time, although it had been nearly twenty years prior and relatively short-lived, they had been almost everything to each other; verbal sparring partners, lovers, confidants, bandmates. For the most intense five months of nineteen-year-old Lisa Cuddy's life, an experience that continued to be unprecedented for her even at thirty-eight, the rebelliously genius med student Gregory House had been her whole world.

That had all happened in an era of her life that seemed long gone, except for the occasional argument with said genius that fanned old flames from the past burning into the present. Hopefully, for the sake of the charity and the hospital, they could keep the embers to a crackle and both save face. Finally turning onto the street where Amber and Wilson lived, Cuddy automatically checked her make-up in the rearview mirror.

Timing her arrival for 7:45, she didn't expect House to be there yet. Since he was rarely punctual, Cuddy thought it might give her a few minutes alone with Wilson to fill him in on the whole Philip Webber issue. She was fairly sure that whole element of the situation had eluded the more level-headed doctor's knowledge, because Cuddy was sure he would have chastised House for whatever juvenile scheme he was certainly hatching in terms of revenge.

All week she had hoped to catch Wilson without House or a patient present to address the issue, but it seemed like every time there wasn't a patient, there was House. _Did he realize his misstep and think I would rat him out_? the brunette thought to herself as she carefully clicked the button to set her car alarm, not wanting to chip her newly dry French manicure. Looking around, Cuddy did not see either House's antique sedan or his bike in plain sight, so she thought her plan for an early entrance had worked. That assumption was immediately proved wrong when the administrator knocked on the apartment door only to be faced with the scheming diagnostician in the flesh.

"Fancy meeting you here… fifteen minutes early," House quipped predictably. "This is a quasi- social situation with the potential for some actual fun, Cuddy… not a board meeting."

"Says the man who is _never_ early… who is also early right now," she retorted easily. She immediately noticed that although he was dressed in his preferred attire of jeans, sneakers and a t-shirt, the jeans looked nearly off the rack and the deep blue Led Zeppelin T-shirt, dangerously close to the color of his eyes, appeared to be a recent purchase, as well. It also seemed like House had tamed his face within the last twenty-four hours. _If only he could have the consideration to look less unintentionally desirable_, Cuddy lamented internally.

"Pshh, this is Wilson's… there's no early or late for me. There's just _here._"

"Um, actually, this is not Wilson's place… it's mine," Amber chimed from the kitchen, irritated. "Welcome, Dr. Cuddy!" she greeted in an overly friendly way, entering the room. "Can I get you something to drink?"

"I'm good for now, but thank you," she answered with a mechanically polite smile. As Cuddy carefully slipped past House and into the pleasantly furnished living room, Wilson sent his brash girlfriend a slightly disturbed glance from the couch in response to her thoughtless comment about their living arrangements.

Walking over to make amends, Amber said to Wilson, "I meant… _our_ place." He still seemed irked, so the redhead sat down next to him and gave him a placating peck on the cheek. "It's still new… I just forgot myself for a second, that's all." At that, Wilson smiled nauseatingly and gave her a longer kiss on the lips in return.

"Seriously, if you two are going to carry on like this all night, you should be providing your guests with those barf bags they hand out on airplanes," House taunted, still not approving of his annoyingly sensitive best friend's inexplicable attraction to someone as domineering and inherently unlikable as Amber Volakis.

"Just because you're a miserable asshole doesn't mean we all have to be," the redhead sniped.

"Just because you're hot and smart doesn't make you any less of a cutthroat bitch!"

"Whoa there boys and girls… do you two need another round of bedpan duty? Because that can probably be arranged…" Cuddy interrupted, only half serious.

"Sorry boss, can't punish the underlings with work when we're not at work. Fraternizing with 'the help' has its downsides, doesn't it?" House pressed on with a smirk.

Cuddy huffed, her musings from the drive causing her to take the jibe more seriously than it had been intended. "In case you've forgotten, it was your idea for me to 'fraternize' in the first place. You practically _begged _me to be a part of this."

"You must have misunderstood. I don't beg."

"You were doing an awfully good impression of it on Tuesday in my office…"

To no one in particular, Wilson muttered under his breath, "Here we go again…"

"Wow. Your factual interpretation of events _really_ needs work if you read my mild interest in your participation as _begging,_" House continued.

"Mild interest, my ass. And I have other things I could be doing tonight."

"Oh, please… like what? Downing a bottle of cabernet all by your onesies and taking your vibrator for a spin to the soft core porn on Skinamax?"

Cuddy forced her face blank. "Over-reaching for shock value much?"

"Over-reaching for 29 with your wardrobe much?" House snapped, circling a pointed finger in his boss's general direction to feign his disproval of her figure-hugging knit gray top, skinny jeans and stilettos. _How does she always manage to choose clothing that does nothing but solicit attempted removal at the hands of defenseless bystanders? _ he contemplated grumpily.

"As entertaining as this game of verbal Ping-Pong is…" Wilson interrupted in a parental tone, "… maybe you two should take it down a notch before your former team and the newbie team arrives. I'm immune to both of you, and Amber has developed a tolerance for your crap faster than anyone else I've ever been in a relationship with, House. But I don't usually see you two reach this point in front of a large audience." The arguing doctors both sighed. If they could agree on anything, it was that Wilson often showed too much resemblance to a mother hen. Also, he was right far too much for either of their liking.

House gave a reluctant bob of his head but withheld eye contact from Cuddy. "Truce?" he said quietly, offering her a fist-shaped olive branch.

She thought briefly, then shrugged, knowing that she didn't have much of a choice. "Truce," she conceded with a slight grin, bumping her fist back. Before anyone could continue the conversation, there was a knock at the door. House opened it since he was still standing the closest, and on the other side were Cameron, Chase and a little unexpectedly, Kutner.

"_More _early people? What kind of musicians are you?" House demanded with exaggerated disbelief.

"I was in marching band… those directors are tyrants if you're not in formation ten minutes before the beginning of rehearsal!" Cameron teased, giving Wilson and Amber a wave Cuddy a friendly nod, which she returned.

"Well, this band won't be doing any marching. You know, the leg and all," House said pathetically, clutching his thigh far more obviously than he would if he were in actual pain. At one point and time, Cameron would have immediately felt bad for making an insensitive remark about her former boss's leg. Thankfully, she had moved on to a place where she just shook her head at him and shot him an "oh please" look that had the others laughing audibly.

"Thank God… I wouldn't have picked orchestra if I had any desire to march," Chase quipped. "Think I'll get to use my fiddle much in this group?" he asked House.

"Not sure yet. We'll have to see what kind of vocal chops we're looking at before we can start picking music," House answered plainly, one of his first sincere remarks that evening. Although his pain was down to a dull roar thanks to some recently ingested pills, he did finally decide to take a seat in one of the chairs nearest the door.

"Makes sense," Chase shrugged casually. "I hope I can play some, though… I don't get the chance much these days."

"Same with me and my sax… I don't get to play nearly as much as I'd like," Kutner piped in.

"Did you march in high school, too?" Cameron inquired.

"Oh yeah, we were required to march," Kutner smiled. "Wasn't as much my thing as Jazz, though. That was my zone!" he gestured smoothly with his palms for effect.

"So did you play alto sax to march?" House probed. "They're the same transposition."

"Yeah, until I was a sophomore. But then I was a drum major my junior and senior years."

"Wow, for two years? You must have been pretty good," Cameron complimented

"Eh, I was alright. Good with rhythm… and I didn't hate being the center of attention."

Most of the room's occupants laughed, and even House looked mildly amused. In spite of the harsh exchanges that took place right after Cuddy arrived, she had to admit a change from the workplace atmosphere put her employees in a new light for her. Kutner teetered on the edge of being a more cheerful, but equally reckless version of House at the hospital, but she could already tell that his easygoing demeanor and humor would help to balance out some of the intensity of the other potential group members.

Another knock sounded at the door, and Kutner answered it this time.

"Good evening, all," Forman greeted. "So where are we going?"

"Not even a 'how are you' or 'I brought some pot' or 'thank you for inviting me to partake in musical awesomeness, House?' "

"Let's get one thing straight… I'm here to help the hospital, and maybe our department, get some good publicity. Not to be your puppet, alright?"

"You have _got _to be the biggest buzzkill on the planet. Worse than that one over there," House complained, pointing to Cuddy.

"Hey! I _know_ how to have fun," she countered, putting her hands on her hips in annoyance. "You _know _I know how to have fun," the administrator added, forgetting the present company for a minute. But it was too late.

"Does he, now?" Chase mused. Cuddy shot him a look, and he thought better of his initial reaction. "Sorry," he said, clearing his throat. He continued, trying to break the tension, "So… do you play anything, Dr. Cuddy?"

She softened a bit at Chase's question and grinned. "Um, yeah. Cello. And some bass guitar."

"Nice. It'll be great to have a fellow string player in the band," Chase acknowledged with a smile. She returned it shyly.

"Cello's a beautiful instrument. If I had played something, that probably would have been it," commented Amber.

"I never knew that, Cuddy. Were you any good?" queried Wilson, intrigued at this knew knowledge of his long-time friend.

"Oh, uh... I don't know. I…"

"She _is _ very, very good. As in presently. And unnecessarily modest in this one and _only _particular aspect of her life," House finished for her with an uncharacteristic compliment.

Cuddy quickly became incredulous. "How did you know?"

"Besides all that time I spend snooping around your house when you're not home looking for skimpy underwear to steal? I found lots of other things, too. I know you have a cello in your basement." His boss looked unamused and quirked an eyebrow. "Ok, _fine_… in your office. Like you'd keep it someplace that wasn't temperature controlled… but you still play. You have dainty little callouses on all the playing fingers of your left hand. Even a nice one on your thumb… which can only mean that you're playing literature that uses thumb position. And since you could play stuff like that right out of high school, and you didn't suck then, I'm guessing that you still don't suck now."

Everyone in the room looked surprised, but Cuddy appeared downright dumbfounded. She had never _once _mentioned her cello to House in all the years of their re-acquaintance after his infarction; it would have stirred up too many memories that she felt were safest left in the hidden shadows of their shared past.

"That's just kind of creepy when you do that, House," Cameron finally said, breaking the silence.

"Do what?" he replied, playing dumb.

"Make a totally thorough observation about some miniscule detail of a person that escapes the notice of ninety-eight percent of the population," supplied Foreman.

"That's our silly House," said Wilson in a purposely effeminate manner. House eyed him, and the oncologist coughed a little too loudly.

"Do you sing too, or just play?" Cameron engaged Cuddy.

"A little," Cuddy lied. She could tell that House was about to correct the self-deprecating assessment of her singing abilities, but a beeping sound from Kutner's pocket distracted everyone from the exchange. He pulled his phone out to check it.

"Just got a text from Thirteen. She put in some clinic hours today, and they're short-handed because someone didn't show up. She's going to stay an extra hour or so until they can get someone to cover… I guess it's really busy… but she says she'll meet up with us when she's done if I tell here where."

"Tell her Beasly's. Over on State," House instructed

"In Princeton?" asked Kutner. His boss nodded, and the younger doctor's thumbs moved swiftly across his Blackberry to key a response.

"Where's short and furry, by the way?" House asked the room.

"Oh, dinner with his wife and another couple that he couldn't get out of," the texting resident answered, his face still fixed on the screen while he messaged Thirteen. "He messaged me this afternoon, I guess I forgot about it. He said he'd try to get away later if he could."

"Beasly's?" repeated Amber after the fact after having time think. "Wait a minute… I used to live right by that place. Don't they do _karaoke_ on Saturday nights?"

"You're holding our auditions at a _bar_? In front of a bunch of strangers?" Cameron demanded.

Wilson snickered. Amber turned to him and grilled, "You knew about this, didn't you?"

"Um… no?" he squeaked unconvincingly.

"Oh for Christ sakes, would you all chillax? Part of being in a band is performing in front of a bunch of strangers, and usually drunk and rowdy ones. Call it modeling the conditions of a real-world scenario," House lectured. "If you can't handle belting out a couple of tunes with all of the words flowing by on a big screen right in front of you while being heckled by obnoxious people, you don't have the balls for my band, or the competition."

For some strange reason, almost the entire room looked to their dean in that moment to shut House down or tell him that he was being unreasonable. Instead, she did the last thing any of them would have expected her to do. Her face broke gradually into a sly grin, one that her troublesome employee then mirrored, albeit faintly. Cuddy stood up and walked to the door with a confident swagger. The weight of perfection's façade had tired her, and she was ready to drop it long enough to enjoy herself for one night.

Turning the knob and putting a foot in the hallway with a devious grin, she said, "Well, are you guys coming? Or are you going to be a bunch of chicken-shits about it?"

Most of the room could only gape, but House smiled a _real_ smile. The fearless and thrill-seeking girl he had fallen in love with at Michigan was still in there somewhere. Philip Webber be damned; he couldn't wait to draw her out again.

**A/N: Ok folks, here's the deal. Now that the cat's out of the bag about karaoke, I would appreciate a little help with songs for a few characters. (And this isn't going to be like a typical "song fic" where I just list lyrics. If you want to see how I handle songs in context, you can take a peek at chapter 9 of my Megamind story "The Science Isn't QUITE Impossible." No pressure.)**

**Requested Input:**

**1) Something embarrassing and poppy for Wilson to sing. Probably something that was original sung by a girl. **

**2) Something that House would sing specifically to embarrass/piss off Cuddy.**

**3) Something for Kutner to sing... maybe as a duet. I'm having trouble envisioning what kind of music he would like.  
**

**Feel free to give ideas in comments or PM me if you would rather. You can give me suggestions for the others if you want, but I already have a pretty good idea of what I'll be using for them. Also, I made a decision about keeping my music choices chronologically in line with cannon. I will basically try to adhere to 2008 or before for the sake of my headcannon, unless there is a specific song that I want to use for a specific purpose. Thank you in advance for your assistance :-D**

**** NERD NOTE** - "All of Me" by John Legend may possibly be one of the most perfect Huddy songs in the history of EV-ER. If anyone is still making videos... you would basically make my life if you made one for that song. Otherwise, I may just have to learn how to do it myself. Because it is something that NEEDS to exist, in this Huddy's humble opinion.  
**


	5. Chapter 5- Epic Sex Battles of History

**Happy St. Patrick's Day, fandom! Here's the next installment... laying some groundwork for the dynamics of our future band. I didn't get a ton of song suggestions for the upcoming karaoke segment, but I asked my husband (also a fan, but not to the GEEKING degree that I am) for some input. He gave me some good ideas and led me to some of my own. I'm working on that part right now, so we'll see how it goes!  
**

**And as always, shout-outs to my fabulous reviewers for the previous chapter: IHeartHouseCuddy, Abby, lenasti16, HuddyGirl, lin12344, Alex, Guest, and JM!  
**

**Of course, I wouldn't cry if I got some more lovely reviews for chapter 5 ;-) Please and thank you!  
**

Chapter 5- Epic Sex Battles of History

By 8:10, the potential future band mates had all followed Cuddy out the door and divided into two carpooling groups. House thought that Wilson should drive, because he knew that his friend would definitely have the presence of mind to call for a cab if he were too drunk to drive by the end of the night. So along with Amber, Cuddy rode with them, if only because it would be less awkward than riding with her other employees. The former and present fellows decided that Forman would be the other driver along similar lines of supposed responsibility.

Beasley's was typically busy for a bar hosting karaoke on a Saturday night. Upon arriving, House led everyone to a section of empty tall tables near the back of the room, since most of the others were already occupied by high-spirited patrons. Some attractive, if slightly inebriated college girls were currently on the stage singing a popular Katy Perry song.

"This song is such a cliché," Wilson complained, trying a little too hard to appear pretentious about the singers' taste in music.

"Yeah, that's why you and all of the other guys are drooling at those hot twenty-year-olds singing about kissing other girls," Amber chastised, indicating the rest of the men at their tables. Cuddy and Cameron laughed.

"Hey, I'm not drooling! I agree with Wilson," said Kutner defensively.

"Wilson's being a little ass-kisser… so if you agree with him, what does that make you?" countered Amber.

Kutner started to answer, but House interjected, "Better to just plead the 5th and quit while you're ahead. You need your big boy pants to play with Cutthroat."

"Oh… look at that…" the normally stoic Forman remarked in an interested tone, his eyes too glued to the scantily clad women on the stage like most of the boys' to register the redhead's comment

"Wow… you think those two are going to start making out?" Chase asked House, who was standing right next to him. Cameron stopped laughing and pulled a face, but it was lost on her boyfriend.

"It's a lovely thought, but I think they would need at least another .03 on their blood alcohol to reach bisexual drunkenness. Maybe we should send them a few six-packs of Smirnoff Ice and persuade them to sing it again in a couple of hours," House suggested helpfully.

Cuddy rolled her eyes and said in the general direction of the girls, "Men are pigs." Amber and Cameron nodded their agreement. "Would you two members of civilized society like to go with me to get a drink?"

"Absolutely!" Cameron answered, and she and Amber gladly followed Cuddy to the bar.

Wilson immediately began scolding House. "Can you _please_ try and refrain from being a sexist jerk the entire night? Some of us plan on getting laid when we get home."

"What about him? He was being just as sexist as me," House whined, pointing at Chase.

"You're digging your own grave, man," Wilson warned the Aussie doctor.

"Yeah, I can imagine that _one night _of night of not having sex with Cameron because she overreacted to the attention he paid some insignificant eye candy would cause him to shrivel up and die," House snarked.

"Hardly," sneered Chase, drawing some curious glances from the other men.

"Wait a minute… you're lucky enough to be going home with a sure thing, that looks like _her_, and you don't care?" wondered a baffled Kutner. Chase shrugged apathetically and pulled his phone out of his pocket when he felt the buzz of a text message. Kutner gave the surgeon a quizzical look and glanced toward where the women were standing at the bar.

"Trouble in paradise?" questioned his former teammate.

"No, not trouble… exactly. Just…"

"Losing some spark, schnookums?" suggested their derisive boss.

"Something like that."

H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C-

"Why do they have to be such jackasses?" Cameron griped to her female coworkers sitting at the bar while she took ambitious sips of an Appletini.

"Well, this entire field trip was organized by the King of the Jackasses, so how surprised should we really be?" retorted Amber, stirring her Vodka Collins with an agitated pinky.

"I'll drink to that," Cuddy added tiredly, reaching her Cosmo to clink with Amber and Cameron in solidarity.

"How do you _do_ it every day, Dr. Cuddy?" Amber solicited earnestly. "How do you supervise House every day without killing him?"

"I've calculated the jail time, and it just isn't worth it."

"God knows you could plead temporary insanity," Cameron commented.

Amber supplied, "Or self-defense!"

"Probably. He insults me and most of the staff and more patients than not on a regular basis. But at the end of the day, the truth is… he saves people who would die otherwise. He sees the tiniest medical anomalies and possibilities that would go unnoticed by pretty much any other doctor."

"He really does," Cameron remarked. "And for all of his self-destructive, alienating behavior, a small amount of humanity does peak through his shell occasionally… just often enough for most of us that know him… not to hate him completely."

"Exactly. But don't get me wrong… some of his less than horrible qualities don't change the fact that he is a _giant_ pain in my ass a majority of the time." Cuddy paused, looking around for the genius in question. "Well, I don't see him limping over here with a sharp retort about _my _ass, so the good news is he hasn't actually started reading minds or planted a microphone in my purse."

"_Yet_!" quipped Amber.

All three women shared some laughing camaraderie on the common denominator of the surely diagnostician in their lives and were at the bottom of their drinks inside of five minutes. Conversation flowed more easily between them the more relaxed they became by the alcohol.

Suddenly, Amber observed, "House may not be coming over to check on us, but it looks like House-Lite is."

"So you're House-Lite, huh?" Cameron teased Kutner as he approached the female members of House's potential band.

"Um… I am?" he asked, confused.

"Yeah emphasis on _light_... as in _fire_…" Amber commented, snickering. Her Collins was as heavy on the vodka as Cameron's Appletini.

Cuddy raised an eyebrow at the flustered male doctor, and he started, "Dr. Cuddy… that was a total accident… I didn't…."

"It was an _accident_ to bring charged defibrillation paddles into the hyperbaric chamber?!" the redhead persisted.

"Oooooo… _burn_!" snarked Cuddy unexpectedly. As the female triumvirate erupted into another fit of hardy giggles, and Kutner turned around and briskly walked back to their tables.

"I think we need to get them back over here, or they'll end up fall-down drunk before we even start singing," he informed the guys upon his return.

"Cuddy… fall-down drunk? Somehow I don't see that happening," Foreman remarked, but the ostracized males looked toward the bar to assess the younger doctor's claim. All three women appeared to be living it up, and gaging from their ostentatious laughter, clearly under the pleasant influence of their drinks.

"I don't think I've _ever_ seen Amber… giddy," observed Wilson, a bit disconcerted. "And I _know _I've never seen Cuddy that relaxed." House smiled almost imperceptibly. He had.

"What about Cameron? Is that normal for her?" Kutner wondered.

"You're paying awfully close attention to what Cameron's up to this evening," his boss chided. Chase didn't comment, but he did lift his eyebrows at Kutner appraisingly.

"I was just curious… since you said it was different for the rest of the ladies," he defended.

"_Ladies?_" House parroted. "Talk about trying to get laid… you use that whole 'I'm a gentleman' act to try and get into girls' pants, don't you?"

"Leave him alone, House… I know this may come as a shock to you, but some women prefer to be treated like more than a piece of meat. And _particularly_ those three over there," Wilson lectured.

"Oh, like all that tossing their hair and crossing their legs and big smiles is just for the benefit of each another. They _like _the attention." Truthfully, House could really care less for any tossing, crossing or smiling that wasn't being done by Cuddy at that particular moment. And as far as she was concerned, he knew for a fact that her wardrobe choices were at least partially influenced by his presence and potential reaction in most situations when they would be around one another.

"Are we going to stand around here doing a live-action version of 'Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus,' or are we actually here to sing?" an annoyed Wilson questioned his best friend."

"To sing. Let's go collect our little barflies before they float away on their own girl-Tini soaked breaths." House started toward the bar and was followed by Wilson and also Kutner, whose new-found sense of chivalry was incredibly suspicious to his boss and not lost on Chase, either.

"… and it's actually pretty big," they overheard Amber finish a sentence as they approached. A small collection of empty glasses surrounded the women. From the looks of it, they had each done a shot in addition to their earlier round and were now onto their third actual drinks.

"Huh. I'd always wondered," Cuddy mused.

"Yeah, me too," added Cameron.

"Makes sense, I guess… but everyone knows the _really _important thing is _how_ they use it!" the dean observed glibly, sending her companions into renewed peals of laughter.

The tail end of the conversation they heard was enough to make most men nervous, but Wilson gamely broke in before he had much chance to process what he had heard.

"Hey, there… are you guys ready to come take a look at the song list with us?" he asked a little too brightly. Cameron was openly assessing Wilson's crotch with her head cocked to the side, and Cuddy looked very purposefully at his face and tried her best to remain composed. He asked House as an aside, "Why are they looking at me like that?"

"I'm guessing it's because they were discussing the size of your junk when we walked up to the bar," he answered far too casually. "Unless they are suddenly _very _interested in visually estimating the inseam measurements of men's jeans." Although after existing around House for such a long time it happened infrequently, in this situation Wilson was easily embarrassed by such a blatantly sexual observation about his anatomy.

"Amber!" he chastised.

"See? I told you that you were dating me. Well… or the chick version of me. At least I'm guessing you would have told me by now if she really had a penis."

Wilson sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. "I am going to walk over to those tables with the gigantic binders and pick something to sing. If anyone wants to come with me, they can," he said, yelling the last part over his shoulder as he walked away.

"God, why does he always have to be so _sensitive _about everything? It was just some harmless girl talk," the read head complained.

"You should be thankful that I popped his verbal abuse cherry before you came along. Think of how much more poorly he would have reacted if he hadn't been subjected to my brand of supportive friendship for years and years." Amber scowled at House, unamused.

"I want to go look at songs!" Cameron suddenly declared.

"Me too," Kutner replied, smiling. "Don't know if I have the guts to get up there by myself, but I want to see what there is."

"Well, c'mon then!" his obvious crush responded happily, grabbing his hand with one of hers and pausing to pick up her drink with the other before dragging him over to the binders to join Wilson.

"Got any more bright remarks for me, House, or can I go look, too?"

"Who's stopping you? But you might want to think about _not_ publicly emasculating the guy whose equipment you plan on using later tonight."

"Dr. Cuddy, do you think I'm being unreasonable?" Amber engaged the other woman, hoping for some support in her recent drinking buddy.

"Oh, no. I'm done refereeing for you two… especially where Wilson's concerned. I'm not going to try and cut that baby in half again," she quipped dryly. Amber initially looked a little disappointed, but then Cuddy smiled at her and said, "But do me a favor and stop with the 'doctor' crap, at least for tonight. Cuddy or Lisa is fine, but no one's saying 'Dr. Volakis' or 'Dr. House.' I want a night off. Now let's go check out the music." Feeling freshly shed of her administrative skin, Cuddy took her cue from Cameron and led Amber by the hand over to peruse the large books with their coworkers.

"What about 'Party Pants'?" House yelled after Cuddy, never missing a chance to throw that particular nickname in her face.

"Shut up, House!" she volleyed back over her shoulder with cheery exasperation.

_Oh, this is going to be fun_, he thought to himself, trailing with restrained excitement behind his friend's girlfriend and his secret former girlfriend.


	6. Chapter 6- Glee

**Good evening, fellow fans and Huddies! Sorry this update has been awhile in coming... I was stuck for a bit on how to handle portions of this chapter, and to be honest, I'm still not sure if I'm completely satisfied with it. But I've been itching to post for days, so here it is. If I decide that I need to add something later on, I'll be sure to mention it on an update :-) It may be just as long before the next one, just to let you know... I try to write at least a chapter ahead of what I post, and I'm breaking my rule for this one simply because I WANT TO POST! EEEE! (Sorry. I think reviews may be replacing coffee as my primary addiction, and I'm having withdrawal.) The next chapter is started, but now that I fixed the issues with this one I think the flow of my must on the upcoming parts will improve. (Hopefully.) **

**Shout-outs for my fantabulous chapter 5 reviewers: IHeartHouseCuddy, JM, Guest, OldSFan, lin12344, Abby, HuddyGirl, Alex, and lenasti16! :-D**

**EDIT on 3/28/14- For a few typos and spacing issues that occurred in the format change from MS Word. Hoping to move forward on working on the story today and to update within a week from now. *Fingers Crossed* **

Chapter 6- Glee

"Hmm. I think I might go with some Billy Joel," Wilson pondered, searching through the enormous red binder containing songs by artists G-K.

"Oh, that's where the 'J' book is… I need to see that when you're done," Cuddy mentioned from the next table over. She was looking through the L-P book, with Cameron browsing over her shoulder.

"I think you need to review your alphabet, oh Wise Dean of Medicine. You won't find the B-52's in either one of those," mocked House while he hastily slid the G-K binder out from under Wilson so that he could see it better.

Cuddy narrowed her eyes. "Ok, so I like '80's pop… so do most people my age. Doesn't mean I don't know how to sing anything else! And I said _I _needed to see that next. Gimme," she ordered, trying to snatch it out of House's grasp from across the table.

"Ah, ah, ah! Finders keepers!" he responded childishly, lifting the awkwardly large book up against himself and out of the shorter woman's reach.

"Oh… would you look at that. All of your animalistic male fantasies are finally coming true… now there _are _girls making out over there," interjected Amber, cocking her head toward the stage disinterestedly from House's left as she leafed through the giant A-F spiral. While all of the men in the group immediately craned their heads in the direction she had indicated, Amber quickly caught Cuddy's eye and sent a not-so-subtle glance toward the oversized volume in his hands. They shared fleetingly cunning smiles, and Cuddy had yanked G-K from the preoccupied doctor's hands before he knew what hit him.

"Thanks, Amber!" Cuddy chirped.

"Not funny. Misleading us about hot women getting nasty? That's just plain treachery," House admonished. "I don't really need the book anyway, though. Already know what I'm doing. Foreman and Chase… follow," he finished, making his way back to their own tables.

"Why?" asked an annoyed Foreman, who was currently trying to make the best of the whole unwelcome situation by checking out Q-U with Kutner. Chase, on the other hand, obediently left his spot by Cameron and the L-P binder to catch up with House.

"Because I need you to run labs for botulism and salmonella on those questionable-looking hot wings sitting on the buffet over there," his boss deadpanned. "My band… my prerogative. Come on."

Although Chase went, he still commented, "I thought you said I didn't _have _to audition."

"I lied!" House sing-songed with raised eyebrows.

Cuddy found the tune that she was looking for, and she and the other doctors made small talk about the available song choices and the half-drunk frat boy currently on the stage singing a very out-of-tune rendition of "Free Bird." Within a few minutes, House and his former and present fellow walked back over toward the rest of the group. Chase went up to the D.J. to inform him of their choice and took his place back at Cameron's side.

"Did you pick something yet?" he asked her, trying to draw attention away from the clandestine pow-wow that had just taken place.

"Yeah, I think so. And obviously you guys did, too… what's he up to?"

"Apparently it's a surprise," Chase replied by sarcastically waving his hands by his head.

"Hey, can I sing with you guys? I don't really want to go by myself," Kutner inquired.

"Nope. See, it's a 'virgin team' bonding thing," House answered.

"But I was on the… 'virgin team'!" objected Cameron, spitting out the last few words as if they left a bad taste in her mouth.

"Oh, sorry. I should have been more specific… a _male _'virgin team' bonding thing."

"So you're going first?" Wilson wondered, surprised.

"Of course we're going first. You think I want to sing after _her_?" his best friend said, nodding his head toward Cuddy.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she demanded, slamming the binder closed since she was finished with it anyway.

"I don't know, you tell me," he pushed with a flippant smile. _It's just too satisfying to push her buttons in front of everyone_, House thought to himself.

Cuddy huffed out an exasperated breath and said, "I'm… going to the ladies room. It may be the only space left in this whole buiding that hasn't been invaded by your ego."

After she had sauntered out of hearing range, House turned back to the group and informed, "I would suggest to anyone who _doesn't_ want their figurative vocal booty kicked by their boss… you will probably want to sing before her."

"How exactly is it that you seem to know so much about Cuddy's musical abilities?" Wilson asked, finally voicing the question that had been on the tip of his tongue ever since House's unexpected DDX of her cello-playing skills.

"And since when do you care if any of us are humiliated?" Cameron wondered suspiciously.

"Really. Doesn't your species feed off of crushed dreams?" chimed in Amber.

Pointing at each one respectively as he responded, he said, "To satisfy your unyielding demand for information: you should know enough to figure that out for yourself, I don't, and normally, yes it does. Avidly. But…" he paused, "… in this case, I _do_ want you to get up there before she puts the smack down so I can figure out who the hell can actually sing." Cameron and Amber glanced at each other wordlessly and then made their way up to the D.J. to inform him of their song choices.

H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C

Cuddy really did have to use the washroom, but she knew that she probably could have afforded to wait a while before it became a real issue. Hating to break the seal after only three drinks, she saw no point in skipping the practical aspects of the trip once she was in there. On a positive note, the facilities were much nicer than in the majority of similar establishments. It was clean, with stylish black and white-tiled walls and fairly new sink fixtures. While the dean washed her hands, though, she glanced at her reflection in the mirror. Her expression unwittingly showed trepidation, and she knew with certainty that the fact had not escaped House's notice. In reality, Cuddy knew exactly why she had gone to the bathroom. Singing in front of House was a can of worms best kept closed, for a number of reasons.

The eye sex, for one. No matter how hard she had tried in the past, if he was in the audience when she was singing, it was inevitable. They could be fighting, angry, ready to tear the others' throats out. But when she sang and he watched, or to turn it around, if he played while she watched, the normally electric air between them reached a charge of a whole new level. More than once, such interactions had led to hasty, erotic encounters almost immediately after one, or sometimes both of them disembarked from the stage. Bathrooms, storage closets, cars… they had never been picky. Back then, their mutual addictions had focused on each other, and the passion of the music only fed their disease.

No matter how she spun it in her head, Cuddy fully appreciated what dangerous territory the present situation fostered for her and House. Also, of equal importance, she knew that _he _knew what it meant, as well. On some level, the head of PPTH wondered if her brilliantly bad employee hadn't purposely orchestrated this aspect of the project with their former tumultuous, but highly physically satisfying relationship in mind.

There was no doubt that both the heat in their verbal exchanges and the audacity of the pranks and games they often played had escalated considerably since the diagnostician's first team disbanded . She banned his guitar; he refused to hire a new team. House caused mass food poisoning hysteria in the cafeteria; Cuddy swapped his Vicodin for laxatives. In return for providing the coveted red thong he had instructed his team to steal from her, she had used their predicament to barter her underwear for Dr. Cole's vote in the latest installment of the department head's "tribal council."

When House had narrowed it down to his final four candidates and asked for her opinion, she told him the opposite of her true choices because she figured _he _would do the opposite of what she instructed. Never one to be played, however, House purposely picked Taub and Kutner knowing that Cuddy would never allow him to have a womanless team. Whatever the stakes, the rules remained a convoluted chain of one-up dominoes that seemed to topple continuously into infinity. The unusually nervous brunette regarded herself in the mirror, took a deep breath, and exited the washroom with a renewed confident swagger in her hips. Cuddy had no way of knowing exactly where the line of dominoes would end, but she hoped she could make the best of the top or the bottom either way.

H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C

While Cuddy attempted to amass her courage behind closed doors to once again face House from the stage, her employees continued their discussion of song choices.

"Well, I could really care less when I go…. I do a pretty mean 'Piano Man,' " Wilson boasted. "The girls are more likely to feel like they're being compared to her, anyway."

House didn't look amused. " 'Piano Man?' Seriously? It's only 9:00, and that's the last call song to end all last call songs. _Way _too early for that one."

"That's why I'm not going right now," Wilson shrugged, turning to join his girlfriend and Cameron as they returned from speaking to the D.J. and started walking back to the spot on which they had laid claim earlier. Chase and Foreman followed as well, not seeing any reason to stick around looking at songs since they had already been cajoled into their secret trio selection.

"What about you?" House asked Kutner, who was still searching through one of the binders.

"I still can't make up my mind… I mean, I'm all in for the instrumental stuff, but I told you. I'm not really much of a singer. I didn't think that I had to sing just because I came."

"Wrong!"

"So you're gonna make Thirteen and Taub sing if they show up?"

"No."

"But why not? How is that fair?"

"You're asking me about fair? Have we met?" House asked sarcastically. "And they were completely up front with their lack of singing skills. When I asked if you could sing, your answer was 'a little.' So you can get up there with everyone else with a sliver of ability to match pitch and take your best shot." Although hardly excited at the prospect, Kutner looked back down at the Q-U binder again briefly, shrugged, and wordlessly left the group to approach the D.J. Almost simultaneously, Cuddy returned from the washroom.

"Trying to stall because you're losing your nerve?" wondered House.

"No… it's called, 'I had three drinks, and I had to pee,' " Cuddy threw over her shoulder defensively as she passed him to get her name and her song on the list. He kept his eyes on her butt while she walked, eagerly anticipating the moment when she would take the stage and he would have an uninterrupted ogling pass for a good five minutes. Seeing her approach, Kutner scurried back to the safety of their tables quickly, still embarrassed by Amber's unnecessary mention of his oxygen chamber mishap.

By the time Cuddy started back toward him, House made sure his eyes were elsewhere.

When she passed him but he didn't follow, she asked, "Are you coming back to the table, or what?"

"I suppose. So what did you need the 'J' book for? Jay-Z? Jamaraquoi?" he mockingly queried.

"Oh yeah. '99 Problems' and 'Virtual Insanity' sound right up my alley," Cuddy answered sardonically, continuing on her path.

"I'm impressed. You really have broadened your musical horizons beyond the years of big hair, oversized crosses and tight spandex pants."

"It's all your fault," she retorted, sitting down on one of the high stools by her newest gal pals, Cameron and Amber.

"I don't know what you're talking about, but it probably is his fault," Wilson interjected.

"Shut up. So…. Jefferson Airplane? Going to 'grace' us with some Grace Slick?"

"Nice try, House. I'm not telling if you're not. You can wait and see like everyone else," Cuddy smiled tightly, sweeping her hand to indicate the rest of their group. Before the conversation could pick up again, the background music being played between songs stopped.

"And now we have… Brian… here with an old favorite, which I'm sure needs no introduction!" announced the D.J.

"That's never a good sign," House muttered, stealing Wilson's imported microbrew and taking an unapologetic swig.

"Do you _mind_?" groused Wilson.

"No… not really. It's tasty."

"Then go get your own!"

House started toward the bar, but threw back innocently, "I wanted to take it for a test drive before I committed to a specific beverage."

Right after he walked away, an instantly recognizable Journey piano riff came over the speakers. A fairly enthusiastic cheer sounded from most of the patrons, but the Princeton-Plainsborough tables were instantly divided down the middle.

"Yeah!" yelled Cameron happily, clapping her approval. Wilson's reaction was similar, and the two high-fived excitedly.

"I _love _this song!" Kutner shouted over the roar of the music just before Steve Perry's voice began with words of "small town girls" and "lonely worlds." Temporarily forgetting his apprehension for singing in front of people, House's youngest fellow joined in with the guy on stage in anything but a bashful tone. "Brian" only seemed to impress the small group from the table where he had been sitting and the smiling woman whose adoration of such a mediocre effort could only be his girlfriend. Kutner, on the other hand, surprised his companions with his pleasantly adequate skills. By the time the refrain repeated, Wilson and Cameron had joined in, and the three were having a grand old time out-performing the awkward guy on the stage.

When the verse came back around, Wilson said to Cuddy over the music, "Come on… I know you have to know this song. Sing!"

"Yeah, I know it… but House will give me shit when he comes back if he catches me singing it. And those three already look mortified," she observed, glancing toward the disconcertingly overwhelmed faces of Amber, Foreman and Chase.

"Won't he find something else to give you shit for anyway?"

"Good point," she conceded. By the time the chorus started for the second time, with a not-so-subtle nudge from Wilson, Cuddy joined in reluctantly at first, but her enthusiasm gained as the song continued. "Brian" was quickly forgotten on the stage, as the slightly tipsy group of doctors easily stole the show from their position in the back of the room.

House went unnoticed by the singing buddies when he came back from adding his beer to Wilson's tab, giving him the opportunity to take in the unusual scene before him; the four of them had resorted to the ultimate in cheesy karaoke audience participation, arms around each other's shoulders. Cuddy held her drink in the air with her right hand, with her other around Wilson, while Cameron was sandwiched between him and Kutner on the other end. Predictably, Kutner waved a bright blue lighter in the air with his free hand like he was in an arena with 20,000 people.

They all broke into satisfied giggles when the song ended and the patrons surrounding their tables erupted into spontaneous applause that was clearly _not _directed at the efforts from the stage. After sharing some quick furtive glances that easily put them on the same page, the four amigos joined hands, raised them over-head and did an ostentatiously show choir-like bow. The group continued to revel in the energy of the moment until it was broken by the mockingly raised eyebrow that House had trained on all of them.

"That… may be the hugest cliché that I have ever personally witnessed," he taunted.

"Oh, come on, House… where's your sense of fun?" Cameron replied lightly.

"Whatever nonsense it is that all of you just displayed… I had surgically removed before I was ten years old," House retorted. And to Cuddy, he chided, "And you _clearly_ haven't been fully reformed from your poppy/bubble gum/arena rock ways, have you? And here I was, thinking you had turned a new musical leaf."

"I happen to have a very eclectic taste in leaves… just because it may not exactly coincide with yours doesn't make it bad. Musical taste is a matter opinion… opinions can't be wrong."

"Says who?"

"Basically… everyone that isn't a crazy religious fundamentalist. Which definitely isn't you," Wilson remarked.

"Ok, well… wrong, right… semantics. Maybe opinions can't be categorically _wrong_, but they can be inherently _stupid,_" countered House.

"I don't know if what we just saw qualifies as _stupid_, exactly… but definitely along the lines of embarrassing," Amber jibed from the adjoining table. Wilson and Cuddy just shot her a look, while Kutner and Cameron seemed to have moved on to an animated conversation of their own. "More drinks?" she asked Chase and Forman, shaking the leftover ice in her glass.

"Sure," Chase answered. "The waitress probably won't make it back here for a while with the way the crowd has been filing in." Foreman shrugged his agreement, and the three non-Journey fans headed past their boss, who had finally taken a seat by Wilson at the other table, to obtain their beverages from the bar.

"Now that's an odd group," Wilson commented as they passed.

"Look around you, though. You can say one thing about music, no matter the genre… a person's likes and dislikes can create both instant enemies _and_ instant bedfellows," contemplated House, a strangely straight-laced comment for him that didn't involve someone's life hanging in the balance.

Wilson observed, "Well, there will have to be some compromise and middle ground involved here if this band thing is really going to work."

"But it's my band!" his friend exclaimed. "The final decisions are all up to me. This isn't the hospital… I don't have to defer to Cuddy, or anyone else. I call the shots, beginning to end."

"Yes, because that attitude has served _so_ many well in the music industry. David Lee Roth… Axel Rose… that turned out _so_ well for them, didn't it?" House just shot Wilson a dirty look and took a deep drink of his beer. Never having shared well, he hadn't thought much about the dynamics that could be involved with so many complicated personalities in one group as it pertained to their particular situation.

"Ok… so maybe a little creative input wouldn't kill me," the diagnostician conceded. "Fleetwood Mac… Rolling Stones… a lot of complex, headstrong people in those groups, but they've mostly stayed the course for the last thirty plus years. Creating music is a lot like running a DDX in a way… a series of dissonances leading to resolutions."

"Now _that's_ a better attitude."

"And we need more alcohol… Kutner, my little Steve Perry-loving compadre… go get some more drinks for your boss man and his second!"

**A/N: Semi-unrelated aside... has anyone else come across echo_fish's picspams from back in season 7?! Holy Effing Lord, it's like I died and went to Huddy Nerd Heaven this week. (If that's a thing.)**


	7. Chapter 7- Soul Train

**Happy Saturday, friends and Huddies! I don't have a lot of time since I'm posting on the run right now, but I may come back and add an A/N at the bottom later tonight. I'm sorry I'm not getting these updates out faster, but sick children have a way of sucking all the free time out of your day. Well, that and work.  
**

**Anywho... shout-outs for reviewers since the last update: IHeartHouseCuddy, lin12344, OldSFan, JM, Abby, HuddyGirl, Alex, and Squibs! **

**As always, reviews = 3 :-D  
**

Chapter 7- Soul Train

Even though upon returning from the bar Forman seemed intent on yammering his complaints on their upcoming performance to Chase, the latter all but tuned him out as he watched his girlfriend continue to share such an easy interaction with Kutner. But before he could really assess his thoughts on the matter one way or another, a familiar face caught his attention near the entrance. It looked like Thirteen had finally been relieved from clinic duty and had found her way to Beasley's. Chase caught her eye and gave her a friendly wave, which she reciprocated as she walked over to the table. Thirteen hardly could have anticipated the sight of the divisively annoyed and exuberant group that she encountered upon joining them.

"Hey!" she greeted Chase, her mood pleasant due to the recent reprieve from the clinic. Turning her head to take in the scene of interactions of the colleagues before her, Thirteen asked him, indicating the currently chatty group of Journey singers, "So what's the deal with all this? Seems early for them to be _that_ drunk."

"Well, everyone's been helping themselves to the alcohol… especially the women… but you literally _just _missed my girlfriend, Wilson, Cuddy and Kutner upstage this guy doing 'Don't Stop Believin'."

"Oh God, not that one… most overdone song at karaoke _ever_."

"You definitely sat down at the right table, then… that's the general consensus of everyone sitting over here," added Foreman.

"Hey look, Thirteen's here!" Kutner noticed, returning from his own brief excursion to the bar. He handed a scotch each to House and Wilson, the latter raising his in welcome to Thirteen and the former giving a friendly-ish nod of the head. She responded with a smile of her own. Coming over to her in person, Kutner said, "Glad you made it! Want me to grab you a drink so you can catch up?"

"Um, sure, I guess I'll have…" Thirteen began, but she was interrupted when one of the prettier waitresses actually approached the table.

"Hi there, can I get you anything?" she asked sweetly.

"Hi," the newly arrived doctor grinned her approval. "I'll have a tequila sunrise."

"I'll be right back with that," the waitress practically purred.

"We've been here for over an hour, and we only managed to flag down a waitress once. You walk in, and seconds later you've got table-side service. How does that even figure?" Forman wondered aloud.

"Easy," shouted House from the adjoining table over the thumping Kylie Minogue song. "You can explain almost everything in life with baseball. That waitress likes to catch, but she isn't looking for someone with their own bat."

"She wasn't tripping over herself for the three of us, so how would you even know?" Amber questioned skeptically, signifying Cuddy and Cameron with her eyes.

"A person who prefers bat-less catching also has specially attuned radar for _other _individuals who favor bat-less catching. Or… possibly switch-hitting. Namely her," he pointed with his cane at his only current female fellow, none too subtly. Thirteen looked slightly taken aback at the bold assertion of her boss. Although she had futilely tried to maintain the "personal" in her personal life in her eight months working under him, she had learned that he would always find a way to yank her secrets into the light of day. The waitress walked back to the table before anyone else could comment and placed Thirteen's drink in front of her with a subtle brush of the fingers.

"I'm Candice if you need anything, by the way," the blond informed her with a bat of the eyes for effect.

"Remy," Thirteen offered a little shyly, her eyes bright with curiosity.

"And I'm Robert," Chase interjected lamely, utilizing his classically disarming smile.

"Nice to meet you, Remy," Candice replied, and then surprisingly directed a wink and a smirk at Chase. "Robert."

With the majority of those at both tables now paying close attention to the exchange, many sets of eyebrows raised in response. Cameron's, on the other hand, took on a furrowed shape and threatened certain reprimand for her boyfriend at the end of the evening. Besides Thirteen and possibly Chase, the reaction evoking the largest response was House's.

"Cool," House drawled out approvingly. "Looks like I may have spoken to soon… Candi appears to be a switch-hitter herself. Or, wait… switch-catcher? Would that be more apt?" he pondered with exaggeration, tapping his stubbled chin and looking toward the ceiling. "Regardless… HOT!" The lecherous doctor elbowed Wilson for effect and took a large swig of his scotch.

Luckily for both House and Chase and the prospect of being beaten to a bloody pulp by all of the women in their group who were _not _Thirteen, the D.J. picked that precise moment to announce the next karaoke participants.

"And up next, we have what looks like quite the accomplished medical trio… Drs. Chase, Forman, and House!"

"Why is my name last? I'm supposed to be the head honcho of this outfit," the diagnostician complained.

"I don't remember what order I gave him... you didn't tell me anything specific about that. Do it yourself next time," Chase retorted, getting off the tall chair and rolling up his shirt sleeves.

"You're just pissy because your girlfriend's pissy with _you_ for trying to get yourself in the middle of a threesome that doesn't include her."

"I was not…"

"Let's just get up there and get this over with, alright?" interrupted Forman as they neared the stage.

"You guys remember what I told you?" House asked. Both nodded their assent

"You sure you don't want to sing lead, though? It's 'your band,' as you so frequently keep reminding us," the blond doctor remarked pointedly.

"It _is _my band, but I don't stake any claim on outstanding vocal studliness. You have the pretty, boy-band looks and voice we need to entice in the ladies. The brooding cripple thing is good for a gimmick, but it doesn't make for a regular crowd draw," House rationalized plainly, pointing toward the mic sitting slightly stage right for Chase to use. He and Forman remained sharing the second mic, and Chase nodded at the D.J. to let him know they were ready to go.

The overly-enthusiastic host began, "And here we go with another old favorite, sure to be a hit coming from these distinguished gentlemen… "Midnight Train to Georgia!"

Cuddy laughed audibly at House's choice from their table in the audience. Although he had acquiesced without complaint to very few stereotypical requests for "bar songs" during their days of gigging, he had never seemed to mind that one, oddly enough. At times, she had wondered if he even liked it a little; the current and amusing scene before her seemed to confirm the dean's long-held suspicion.

"This should be very enlightening!" Amber quipped snidely, pulling her digital camera out of her purse and setting it to record.

"If he sees you, you're probably dead, just so you know," Wilson warned his scheming girlfriend as they heard the first strains of the backing track emerge from the large speakers.

"How's he going to see me all the way back here with those colored lights in his eyes?" she questioned.

"You know House… he's worse than a teacher. Eyes in the back of his head, probably in his knees and hidden cameras in his shoes, for all we know. You should probably listen to Wilson on this one… he's known him the longest."

"Actually, Cuddy…" Wilson began, but Amber interrupted him before the brunette had a chance.

"Shhh, they're starting, I want to get this from the beginning!" Amber hissed at the group.

Although others in their group seemed to be, Cuddy certainly wasn't shocked to see that House had stepped aside for Chase to sing the lead vocals. When they had performed the song in the past, she was normally the one to take Gladys Knight's part. While House's voice was competent and pleasant in its own right, his quite solidly baritone range put many of the song's higher notes beyond a comfortable reach without stepping into his falsetto. So, with Chase and his Aussie charm initially claiming the spotlight, Forman and his boss relegated themselves to the importantly supportive role of the Pips. The harmony flowed with ease between these three men who had worked together for so long, but before that night, had never sung together.

As the song progressed, the energy between the trio increased in its palpability. The pseudo-Pips launched themselves into a surprisingly humorous background routine during the second verse that included overdramatic hand gestures for a number of lyrics, and even the use of House's cane to imitate the movement of the train itself during the refrain. While the majority of the audience may have assumed that they had worked out their shtick beforehand, the men really hadn't nailed down any specifics during the perfunctory conversation that House had steamrolled them into earlier in the evening. The only solidly decided factors were that Chase would sing lead and that Foreman and House would take high and low harmony, respectively.

Wilson and Kutner, both feeling a little left out of the energetic tableau on stage, had remained behind at their designated tables with the slack-jawed Amber, who couldn't seem to wrap her mind around the fact that the three doctors were executing such a musically solid and entertaining performance. The original plan to use her video for House's public humiliation steadily dwindled amidst its obvious success.

By the last few iterations of the chorus, Cameron, Thirteen and Cuddy made their way down to some now vacant space near the front of the stage and danced laughingly along with the performance of their coworkers. While Cuddy tried to simply have fun in the here and now and enjoy the act as a whole, she couldn't help the inevitable pull of her gaze toward House as he sang. Thirteen and Cameron didn't seem to know the words beyond bits and pieces of the chorus, but having performed the song many times herself, the dean of medicine knew all of them.

"I'd rather live in his world, than without him in mine," she sang quietly along with Chase, but then switched to the background vocals shared by House and Forman.

Her gray eyes finally locked with House's blue ones for just a few moments as they both sang, "World, world, world, his and hers alone," each of them remembering all of the times they had done so standing on the same stage. The variance in this exchange had its own magic, however, with Cuddy glancing up at him with a small, unintentionally dreamy smile that spoke volumes of a shared history. House returned their secretive ocular handshake with a slight upturn of his lips that would have been lost on anyone but her.

As Chase finally drew out the last few lines of the song for effect, Forman and House followed suit. Their act drew to a close to thunderous applause from the patrons of Beasley's, the commotion instantly breaking the cloudy spell that had compulsorily woven itself between the two former lovers. Cuddy quickly snapped back to her position of unofficial groupie with the other two female doctors, all three cheering their hearty approval from directly in front of the stage. In spite of feeling like they had been excluded to an extent, an impressed Kutner and Wilson clapped heartily along with the audience from their spot in the back. Amber, on the other hand, pouted petulantly, causing Wilson to chuckle quietly to himself.

Although the ovation hadn't quite ended, the D.J. still ushered the guys off the stage with, "And let's hear it one more time for the dynamite doctors!" Instead of heading right for their previous tables, the trio of men met the trio of ladies who had come to observe and possibly do a little ogling of their own from the footlights.

"_Wow_. Unexpected… I had no idea that any of you could sing like _that_!" Thirteen complimented. "Especially you, Chase. Really. I think I'm going enjoy managing this group!"

"See… I told you the pretty boy thing would work like a charm," the lower voiced of the House said knowingly.

"No kidding!" exclaimed Cameron, standing in front of her boyfriend a bit possessively and snaking her arms around his neck. "That was amazing... and unbelievably hot." He smiled at her eager response and the two shared a lingering kiss, a rare display of public affection for them.

"So much for you not getting laid later!" House snarked with an exaggerated wink at Chase.

"Very funny. Honestly though, I never thought I would see a cover of that song that could even approach the one they did on _Will & Grace_ with Sandra Bernhardt. I think yours was maybe even funnier, because I actually _know _you guys. Forman, I think I _almost_ saw you smile," Cameron chided, stepping away from Chase to give him a good natured punch on the arm.

The more stoic doctor permitted an honest smirk at her comment and answered, "Thanks," he nodded toward Cameron. Turning to his boss and his former team member, Forman added, "I wasn't really expecting to have a lot of fun tonight, but that… was a blast. I'm… really glad you asked me to come, House."

Not used to any kind of sincere thanks from members of his team with the possible exception of Cameron, he encountered a mere moment of speechlessness before regaining his verbal footing. "Well, you know… how would it have looked if we did Gladys Knight and the Pips without at least one black guy in the group?" House deflected. "We needed you. Simple as that."

Forman just shook his head knowingly while he joined the rest of the group to make another trip to the bar. They decided to stake a claim on the empty tables they found nearer the stage, though, and House agreed to save both the tables and his leg the walking if Chase would bring him another scotch. Cuddy remained behind, as well, catching his eye and shaking her head with an annoyingly perceptive, wry smile on her face.

"What are you grinning about?" he asked her testily.

"You," she replied honestly. "You can never just accept a positive comment without twisting it into some kind of smart-alik response, can you?"

"Oh, I don't know," House answered with tongue-in-cheek thoughtfulness. "I suppose it depends on the context of the compliment and its deliverer. If, for instance, _you _were to say to me 'House, you are a god in the bedroom and I want to spend the rest of my life as your sexual slave,' I believe that I would be _considerably _more receptive. _And _reciprocal."

Cuddy just rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, cocking her head to the side to send him a nonverbal "really?"

"But it was good, though. Right?" he finally asked her genuinely, fixing his eyes on an unknown point to avoid hers.

"Of course. You always are. I can't even believe you would ask."

"Chase was good… but that song will always look hottest on you," House flattered just flippantly enough to conjure an ambiguous sort of sincerity.

Cuddy laughed somewhat coldly and rubbed her forehead idly, saying, "I wish that for _once_ when you spend ten seconds not being an asshole, you could do it in front of other people so that I would have evidence that such moments exist in this dimension."

"But that would defeat the entire purpose of my carefully constructed persona of asshood. And we wouldn't want to screw with everyone's worldview by popping that concrete bubble, now would we?"

"Of course not," she sighed, ending the conversation on that unresolved note since their coworkers were starting to migrate back to their new location with an assortment of jackets, purses and drinks.

Just as House took his newly purchased scotch from Chase, the D.J. came back on the mic to announce the next victim. "Ok, and we're back… and let's get… Amber… up here to belt out some Meredith Brooks for us!"

All of the eyes in the group went to her immediately. After a momentary, but almost imperceptible gulp, she collected herself, responding confidently and coolly with a sly little smile. "What? Like any of you are really surprised," she said as she strode up to the stage. Wilson exhibited some wide-eyed concern at her song choice, but the rest of their tables' occupants burst into varying degrees of laughter. Even House chuckled amusedly, which was an atypically unguarded reaction for him. Wilson had never heard Amber sing, and he fervently hoped that she wouldn't be booed off the stage, because he knew that he would be the one stuck dealing with the hellish aftermath.


	8. Chapter 8- The Singing B

**Unfortunately, this is going to be kind of a short update. This next big section was originally meant to all be one big chapter, but if I stick to that, at this rate it will be May before I get it finished. The Muse has plenty of ideas and motivation, but sadly my writing time has been sucked away by other obligations this past week. So, minute as it is, at least it's something, right? I do have some written beyond this, but as always, I make no promises for my posting timeline. Stay tuned for a little A/N at the end, as well ;-)**

**Shout-outs for reviewers who make me smile (and there can NEVER be too many of you, in my book...): IHeartHouseCuddy, striker90, Alex, Abby, HuddyGirl, linda12344, Guest, OldSFan, and JM!  
**

Chapter 8- The Singing B

It was easy for the Princeton-Plainsborough tables to forget that not every person in Beasley's knew Amber Volakis personally; how she could so easily twist someone's seemingly innocuous words for her own personal gain, lie without guilt, and cheat without a hint of regret. So when she stepped onstage to sing "Bitch," she received the response from a Saturday night karaoke bar crowd that any attractive redhead in a tight, but not too-short black leather skirt and coordinating knee-high leather stiletto boots would expect. Several men whistled and whooped, causing Wilson to peruse the male patrons with a disapproving and possessive eye.

House noticed his friend's irritation, and chided, "Are you honestly surprised that men who have never spoken to her find her extremely physically attractive?" Wilson redirected his sneer toward House.

"Is he always so supportive of your romantic relationships?" Cameron wondered sarcastically.

"Yes, as a matter of fact. He may or may not have been a significant factor in my last two divorces."

"I find that…" House began, but he was interrupted by Cuddy.

"Save it. She's starting… shouldn't you be paying attention during your own audition process?"

After the opening A major electric guitar riffs of the song, Amber began the more contemplative first verse in a pleasing, if slightly breathy soprano that would at the very least spare her from an unfavorable audience response. Cuddy enthusiastically cheered on her new buddy from their front row seats, but internally the long-ago veteran rock singer wondered how the harsher tones of the refrain and subsequent verses would sit in Amber's contrastingly clear vocal timbre. The dean needn't have worried, however, because when the prolonged 5 chord hailed the coming chorus, the redhead took the necessary diaphragmatic breath and launched into the notes with a chesty gusto that Cuddy hadn't expected to hear based on the earlier verse.

Glancing surreptitiously at House out of the corner of her eye, she could tell that he was subtlety contented by Amber's unanticipated chops. Also, Wilson looked positively swollen with pride at the woman on the stage, and that particular observance made Cuddy smile. In some messed up way, those two seemed to work, and she largely suspected that Dr. Volakis's ability remain mostly unfazed by House's antics didn't hurt.

At the song's end, Amber did a dainty little curtsey and blew the starry-eyed Wilson a kiss that contradicted her personality's manifestation of its lyrics. This brought yet another round of laughs from her coworkers and friends, but the patrons of the bar gave her a resounding cheer as she left the stage. Upon returning to her table, she received a congratulatory kiss from her boyfriend immediately, followed by a high-five from Kutner, and an unexpected hug from none other than Cuddy herself.

"Amber, that was great!" she complimented genuinely. "And I _love _that song. Always have... this group may not let you live it down for a while, though," Cuddy smiled warningly.

"I know, but I bring it on myself," the redhead shrugged casually. When the administrator raised her eyebrows in response, Amber continued, "It's not like I'm clueless as to how my nickname ended up to be 'Cutthroat Bitch.' I take what I want to get where I want, and I don't apologize for that." As she was talking to Cuddy, House slowly approached Amber, scrutinizing her curiously but not without a hint of mocking about his expression.

"Well? Did I at least manage to touch a pinky to the underside of your lofty expectations?" she asked, crossing her arms with a defiance that may have been a subconscious defense against any insults her former boss might toss her way. Surprisingly, he gave her a curt nod and reached out to pat her condescendingly on the head.

"That'll do, bitch. That'll do."

Amber could have been insulted. After knowing House in both a professional context and a personal one in his role as her boyfriend's best friend, however, she knew that the closest thing he would ever give to a genuine compliment would be laden with sarcasm. She gave House an obligatory eye roll, but followed it with a smirk and a small shake of her head. Cuddy just laughed, thoroughly entertained to see House treating someone in his bizarre little circle besides herself or Wilson with his backhanded version of affection.

"Hey, Taub!" the group heard Kutner's usefully loud voice cut through the conversations and interlude of "Hey, Ya" bumping throughout Beasley's. "I didn't know if you were gonna make it, man… and you just missed Amber sing 'Bitch.' It was _epic_!"

"Yeah, I didn't know if I was going to make it, either. Whenever we have to have dinner with the Rosenbaums, Mrs. Rosenbaum always wants my medical opinion about every tiny ache and pain she's experienced since the _last _time we ate dinner at their house," Taub explained warily.

"And how often do you have to endure that?" wondered Forman.

"About three times a year. But that's at _least _two times a year too many. Who else's human sacrifice did I miss besides Amber's?"

"House, Forman and I sang 'Midnight Train to Georgia' as a group. It went over big… we've been getting all kinds of smiles and winks and waves from several ladies ever since," boasted Chase, who seemed to be crossing over the thin line from tipsy to drunk. "One of them even sent Forman a drink!" Forman grinned haughtily, raising his drink and winking at very pretty dark-haired girl a few tables away who obviously wasn't old enough to be a college graduate.

Cameron sent a glare in her boyfriend's direction, but he was too busy talking to the other guys to see it. _So he's back to being a douche again. Figures_, she thought to herself, continuing to scowl. Her body language was not lost on Kutner, who was sitting just a few seats away, and he continued to be baffled by Chase's seemingly blatant disregard for his very hot girlfriend's feelings. The more time he had spent talking to her over the course of the evening, the more it felt like what he had already acknowledged as a crush seemed to be descending into more deep-seeded emotional territory. All he knew was that he wanted more than anything to make that currently troubled expression leave her face.

**A/N: I don't know if people in the House fandom do this, but over in Megamind quite a few of us have "author" pages on facebook so that we can follow one another, chat, 'n so forth. My handle on there for my writing page is... shocker... "Vast Difference." So if you should be so moved, you can search for my page on there and "like" it. Sometimes I'll ramble on about writing stuff, or fandom stuff, or random stuff, and probably Huddy stuff as well if some of you interested parties were hanging out over there :-P So yeah... mosey on over and give me a "like" if you want :-)**


	9. Chapter 9- The Sing-Off

**Hi, folks! Yeah... I should have had this up a LONG time ago, but you know how it goes. RL. Heh. At least it's a longer chapter this time! And originally, Amber's song was supposed to be part of this longer chapter, which in my opinion would have made the title make a little bit more sense. Anywho, now that my daughter has started preschool this week, (Oh, the tantrums... so many tantrums. I was NOT anticipating it to be this difficult of a transition for her.) I should have a few more uninterrupted writing hours a few days a week. Keep in mind that I am also preparing to run small music/theater summer camps for the music studio where I work, and that will take *some* of that time on occasion. Yeah... enough rambling. On with the story!  
**

**Oh, shout-outs first... have to do shout-outs for my chapter 7 reviewers: IHeartHouseCuddy, OldSFan, linda12344, Abby, HuddyGirl, and Alex!  
**

**I would love some more reviews for chapter 8! Please and thank you :-)  
**

Chapter 9- The Sing-Off

"Ok, and we're back folks! And it's time to have… Allison… come on up and serenade us with a song that will be perennially popular with any of you ladies who grew up in the '90s… 'Stay!' "

"Woo-hoo, yeah, let's go Cameron!" encouraged Thirteen, with her fellow females at the tables clapping in solidarity. The ER attending looked anything but confident as she reluctantly got out of her seat to walk toward the stage.

"You'll kill it, no worries," Kutner said brightly, giving her a friendly pat on the arm when she passed by him. She reciprocated his kind smile, but it was quickly wiped from her face when House decided that he had to put in his two cents before she even performed.

"_Seriously_? Lisa Loeb? Of all the songs you could have picked, you picked the sappiest, most cliché song of that entire decade?" he pressed disdainfully.

"Fuck off, House," she returned bitingly over her shoulder, the comment being the last in a long line of straws that had been lopped on her back that evening. Since it happened so infrequently, he appeared thoroughly shocked by his former fellow's callous comeback. The rest of the doctors did, as well, with Chase looking particularly baffled. For all of his demeaning remarks, it was truly rare for any of House's employees, friends or acquaintances to respond to his insults with such forthright derision.

"Was it something I said?" he finally managed, a hint of a gulp intelligible in his voice. Cuddy made sure to stare daggers at him as she went after the younger doctor.

"Hey," Cuddy tried, gently grabbing Cameron's arm before she could climb the stairs onto the stage. But she just yanked it away from her boss involuntarily, physically repelled by any kind of touch in her current state of mind.

Cameron sighed, trying to gather herself. Turning around and wiping away a tear, she said, "Sorry. He's just such a…"

"Dick. I know… they all are. We already had the obligatory 'men are pigs' conversation earlier tonight," Cuddy reminded her empathetically. In an unusual show of friendliness, she put her arm around the other woman's shoulders, pulling her to the side momentarily and offered, "And I don't know why Chase is being so damn oblivious…"

"How did you know it was him I was pissed at and not House?"

"Oh, please. House has talked to you like that a thousand times before… there's no way you'd go off and snap on him like that unless there was some other underlying issue. I've heard Chase's little remarks and seen what he _thinks_ is subtle eye flirting…" Cameron laughed through her sniffles, "… with all those so-called 'hotties' here and there all night. Don't let him, _or _House for that matter, ruin your fun. Go. Sing. Kick ass, and make him eat his words."

"I think that might actually cause him to suffer multiple organ failure, with all of the arrogance he's got pumping through his veins."

"Well, maybe you can just replace some of that arrogance with crow and see how he likes it. Chase, too," Cuddy giggled at the observation, and Cameron finally allowed the corners of her mouth to raise slightly. "That's more like it. Bring it, girlfriend," she said, giving Cameron's butt an encouragingly platonic smack.

As she finally took the steps up to the stage, the D.J. joked, "I was about to send out a search party, I thought you'd lost your way!" Cameron just smiled, and approached the mic with a renewed sense of confidence thanks to Cuddy's pep talk.

Unlike her predecessors from Princeton-Plainsborough, Cameron chose to remove the microphone from its stand and hold it as the strains of an acoustic guitar capoed to accommodate Db major filled the bar. When she launched into the first verse, her eyes found Chase's and let him know in no uncertain terms that, in her mind, the lyrics spoke volumes to the current state of their relationship.

"And you say… I only hear what I want to…"

Finally focusing his attention on the stage, he quickly realized that Cameron's gaze was trained quite intentionally on him. Unfortunately for Chase, that fact was not lost on the rest of their group, garnering him a mocking sneer from House, a shaking head from Wilson, and a disapproving glower from Cuddy. Similarly as she had been with Amber, the latter was impressed with the unassuming strength in Cameron's belt, appropriately suited to the song she was singing.

Ironically, she and Chase had been on both sides of the song's theme of pursuit and rejection in their romantic entanglement at one time or another. He had begun as the pursuer, vying strongly for a place in her heart while she consistently avoided commitment. Presently, though, nearly a year after the surgeon had finally won her over, he appeared bored by the constraining minutia of the relationship's day-to-day emotional obligations.

In spite of her initial fixation on Chase, Cameron eventually allowed her eyes wonder the room a bit more so as not to appear too brooding. When she got to the part about the radio playing "her song," she just happened to register a typical eye roll from House, but also an unexpected, nearly imperceptible smile fighting its way from his lips. Amber appeared somewhat judgmental as always, but she could feel the waves of assuring vibes flowing from Cuddy and Thirteen's encouraging grins.

As her gaze flitted across their group, it was impossible for the blond doctor not to notice Kutner's soulful brown eyes regarding her with a depth that had never quite been conveyed to her by Chase's blue ones. Cameron felt the slightest flutter in her heartbeat as she took the necessary supportive breath for the phase, "Some of us hover when we weep for the other, who was dyin' since the day they were born." Kutner smiled pensively at her thoughtful interpretation of the lyrics. She wasn't exactly sure what she had been seeking from her relationships in recent years, but what Cameron experienced in that moment told her that something had indeed been missing. Before she knew it, the song had come full circle with the first line repeating as the last.

"And you say… I only hear what I want to."

Although the overall tone of the song was far more serious than the prior performances from the group of Princeton-Plainsborough doctors, Cameron's poignant rendering of "Stay" nonetheless garnered her an entirely wholehearted round of applause. With Cuddy and Kutner cheering the loudest, the ER attending took a slightly awkward and perfunctory bow, placed the mic back in its stand and started down the stairs of the stage to rejoin her tables. Cuddy met her first, holding her hand up for a high-five.

"Told you you'd bring it," she said knowingly, sharing a short squeeze with Cameron after their palms slapped in victory.

"I just put it all in the song," she responded with relief.

"And that's the perfect place for it! Much better than wasting the energy verbally assaulting what are essentially deaf ears."

"True story!"

"Hey, Allison…" Kutner began awkwardly, "… um, Cameron. You were… I mean, the _song…_ was beautiful. I think you should definitely front some songs for the band."

"Well, I don't know about that… it's not really my call anyway. But thanks, Kutner," she replied gratefully, giving him a short but heartfelt hug. And finally, after an evening of attention-roving cluelessness, the younger doctor's attention to his girlfriend seemed to make a dent in Chase's thick skull. He decided that he'd better assert his presence before the mostly innocent flirtation became something more due to his inattentiveness.

"Gorgeous, m'lady," the surgeon murmured into Cameron's ear while he snaked his arms around her from behind. "You should sing for me more," he added with annoyingly slurred words, kissing her neck possessively and keeping a look out for Kutner's reaction out of the corner of his eye. As he expected, Kutner turned back to talk to Thirteen and Taub upon witnessing the display between the other two doctors.

"Really?" Cameron asked her boyfriend skeptically, giving his hands an almost platonic pat before untangling them from her torso. "It seems to me like I've tried a few times to get you out to do karaoke, but you always make excuses."

"But it's interesting how when _I _ said, 'sing', you said 'how high,' " House haughtily interjected, walking a few careful steps in the crowded space with his cane to join the conversation. "And you…" he started, addressing Cameron, "… have a halfway decent voice, even if your taste in music lacks any… well, actual taste or depth. But we can work on that. If _she _was able to be rehabilitated from her inexplicable penchant for the poppiest of Pop, there's hope for you yet."

Cuddy could feel his stare burning into the back of her neck even though she was turned around talking to Wilson and Amber, instinctively knowing that his words referred to her. She turned around with her hands on her hips just so he would know that she had indeed heard his barb. Narrowing her eyes in challenge, he did the same, and Cuddy had a weird sense of déjà vu back to a moment on their flight back from Singapore the previous year. She had been so incredibly pissed at him for sticking her back in coach to compensate for his outlandish hotel costs, but so infuriatingly turned on by the electrically charged masculinity he exuded through his leer, nevertheless. Cameron, on the other hand, just shook her head at her former boss and finally allowed a wry smile in Chase's generally intoxicated direction.

"Ok, now that everyone's here, shots for everyone on me!" Kutner's voice cut through all of the conversations in their group. He laid the small, round bar tray down on one of the tables and his coworkers began grabbing eagerly at the liquid gifts.

Thirteen was the first to ask after observing the interesting layering of colors and smelling it, "What is this, exactly? It smells like… butterscotch schnapps… um…"

"Baily's too, I think," Forman supplied.

"There's something else too, though, I just can't quite put my finger on it," added Wilson.

"So let's get our tongues on it instead of our fingers and figure it out!" House exclaimed like a very big kid in an alcohol-laden candy store.

"I mean, I can tell you what's in it if you…" Kutner began, but he was quickly cut off by the expert puzzle solver.

"No! What's the fun in that? Ok, everybody drink on three… one, two, three…" counted House anticipatorily, finishing with a raised glass toward Cuddy and then Taub. "L'chaim!"

Everyone in the group took the shot like a pro, even those who normally would have sipped a bit more cautiously. The majority of the party's inhibitions, however, had already been drastically lowered due to the vast amounts of liquor they had already consumed.

"Wow!" Cameron verbalized through partially sucked in cheeks. "_That _was strong. But good!"

"So what is it?" Chase curiously asked, and Kutner looked at House expectantly before daring to answer himself.

"Whoever got the butterscotch schnapps and the Baily's… good noses. The mystery component is… drumroll, please… Midori. A melon liqueur… making this…" House thought for a moment, appearing to truly search his mind for the obscure answer. "… an Alien Nipple?"

Kutner laughed excitedly and came over to give his boss some tipsily playful punches on the arm. "No way, man! That's amazing!"

House half-heartedly swatted Kutner's well-meaning assault away, but not without leveling a subtle wink in Cuddy's direction. She returned it with a conspiratorial smirk; one of his favorite past-times in college had been wowing bar patrons with his uncanny ability to pinpoint the individual ingredients in mixed drinks and shots. And yet here they were in another bar, half a lifetime and half a country away from those days, still singing, still sharing little inside moments and the same underlying tension that had defined the entire span of their relationship, in all of its various incarnations.

Not long after at least temporarily positive relations had established themselves between their tables, the unendingly high-spirited D.J. interrupted, "We are really having quite the 'healing' evening here at Beasley's with all of the medical personnel we seem to have in the house. Can we get… Dr. Lawrence Kutner up on stage… or as I'm sure we'll all be calling him before the night's over… 'Mr. Roboto!' "

The more freely flowing alcohol did nothing to quell the over-the-top reaction of the table of doctors. While their response had been similar upon learning Amber's selection, any attempt at restraint had been forgotten in the wake of the latest round of Alien Nipples. Not one to normally shy away from attention, Kutner had a moment of doubt evident in his eyes. When he noticed Cameron laughing giddily at the prospect of his upcoming performance though, the reemergence of her smile bolstered his mettle.

Regaining his characteristically smiley demeanor by the time he took the stage, Kutner wasted no time preparing to ham it up for the bar's clientele with the cult-popular Styx song loved by nerds everywhere. As the synthesizer hailed its introduction, House could not allow the moment to pass without sufficient commentary.

"Aside from my group of bros, everyone I've brought has been one big walking, singing cliché," he remarked dryly to Wilson.

"_Aside _from your group? Oh yes, no one _ever _does 'Midnight Train to Georgia at karaoke," the oncologist snarked. "Just you."

"I didn't mean in that sense. In a hundred years, no one with the possible exception of our bodaciously-bodded boss would have pegged me for that song. The rest of these guys… I could have been given five guesses for the three of them and _easily _figured out what each of them would pick. Especially Kutner… a defective Magic 8-Ball could have predicted his choice."

"And why exactly would Cuddy know that?"

Before Wilson's question could receive an answer, though, Kutner conveniently launched into his first section of the song that didn't include the computerized Japanese backing vocals. Those at their tables who had been close enough to hear him singing during "Don't Stop Believin' " were hardly surprised at his ability, but having been at the bar, House hadn't been present to hear much of it.

While the diagnostician's reactions proved unflappable and understated in most situations, it was impossible for him to remain stone-faced during Kutner's downright uninhibited rendering of "Mr. Roboto." The younger fellow didn't merely sing, but presented almost a full interpretive dance of the song's plight of modern man against a society overrun by technology, thinly veiled in the guise of a glam-oriented rock opera. Anyone else could have easily overreached their theatrics, but Kutner maintained just the right amount of tongue-in-cheek to keep the lyrics' darker tones from overtaking his own artistic vision. House smiled in spite of himself; suddenly, he didn't mind the multiple comparisons to Kutner he had endured in the past several months. Once upon a time, in a land far away… the older doctor really _hadn't_ been so different.

The rest of the Princeton-Plainsborough crew allowed more overt responses. Cameron was laughing so hard that tears streamed freely down her cheeks. Cuddy was nearly doubled over herself, her forehead precariously pressed forward against Wilson's upper arm, while his own shoulders shook with decidedly unmanly tipsy giggles. Thirteen yelled and whooped for her teammate openly with a freshly procured drink her right hand. Clearly having caught up in the way of alcohol, an uncharacteristically bombastic Taub did similarly at her side. Although they were more typically reserved, even Forman, Amber, and Chase appeared to be enjoying the performance.

When Kutner finished the dramatic ending with his proclamations of Kilroy, he was met with thunderous applause from the audience. His was the only ovation so far that approached the one received by House's trio, and that did not go unnoticed by the man himself. The D.J. could hardly be heard above the din as Kutner jumped enthusiastically right off the front of the stage so that he landed directly in front of his friends. All of the female doctors, with the exception of Amber, immediately mobbed him with hugs, and several of the guys offered a series of high fives and pats on the back. As the other performers had, Kutner looked toward House for some kind of feedback.

"Well, boss? Any words?" he asked expectantly.

"I don't know if your modestly was false or misguided before, or if you were fishing for some type of reassurance. Either way, _you _could have followed Cuddy," House answered a bit cryptically, but not insincerely. Then he added flippantly, "I have to take a leak. I'm gonna hurry up and go, because speak of the devil… and I do mean that literally…" House purposely brushed past Cuddy while he walked, adding "… because _you're_ up next!"

The dean's eyes went wide at his observation, and she realized he was right. She hadn't done this away from the forgiving reflection of her bathroom mirror or the safety of her car in years; between the way House had talked her up and Kutner's ostentatious presentation, Cuddy only hoped she could deliver to the proverbial high bar of his expectations.

**A/N: I based Kutner's crazy performance of Mr. Roboto, to the best of my ability, on a girl I knew in high school who had a whole routine worked out for it with one of her friends. I wish I could have gone into a bit a bit more detail, but there are only so many hours in a day, and I can only remember so much after all these years.****  
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***Shameless Plug*- Hop on over to Facebook and like my writing page! Search for Vast Difference and you should find it pretty easily. I write about writing sometimes, or story ideas, or sometimes just Huddy nerd rants :-P  
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	10. Chapter 10- Smash

**Ok... so this chapter has been waaaay too long in coming... but I did take my detour back over to "Baby Daddy" to FINALLY update it after almost 4 years (go have a read if the spirit so moves you *shameless self-plug*), so bear with me. That being said, I just finished this installment today... I don't know if I feel like it's 100% ready to post... but it's been 100 years, so I'm putting it up anyway... I reserve the right to come back and edit... yada yada, whatever, it's late... you get the idea :-P  
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**Shout-outs and big Huddy hearts for my lovely chapter 9 reviewers: IHeartHouseCuddy, OldSFan, linda12344, Abby, HuddyGirl, Alex, and my two Guests!  
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Chapter 10- Smash

"So it's after 10:00 now," Wilson yelled to House a short while later over the thumping bass of Notorious B.I.G.'s "Hypnotize" while the two of them knocked back yet another pair of craft beers.

"And I have a giant hole in my leg. And Cuddy has the most epically fabulous ass in this entire bar. State the Obvious is fun, huh? Your turn!" House replied with a degree of joviality in his sarcasm that sounded very out of place coming from him. Although it required nearly a distillery's worth alcohol, the doctor of many vices had actually consumed enough in the last few hours to be approaching a low level of intoxication.

"What I _meant_ was," Wilson said with his own brand of tipsy exaggeration, "Do you think it's late enough for me to get up there and do some 'Piano Man' now?"

"It probably would be by the time they actually call you up there. Cuddy put her name in almost an hour ago, and she still hasn't gone," he answered, trying to look casually in the brunette's direction. She was standing near Cameron and Taub, moving casually to the music, and the three of them were laughingly watching Thirteen and Kutner do their own humorous lip synch and dance to the still-popular ten year old Hip-Hop song that would be forever immortalized due to the fact that it was a posthumous release.

Wilson noticed House's preoccupation with their boss and the swaying motion of her hips, and had to inquire, "So are you ever going to tell me what it is I'm already supposed to know about this whole music thing with you and Cuddy?"

"You know that she and I were… friendly at Michigan," House answered as nonchalantly as possible, trying hard to maintain what wits he still had left about him so as not to give away too much information. "You knew I was in a band."

"Yeeesss… I knew both of those two separate and supposedly unrelated facts before tonight. Am I now to assume that they _aren't_ quite so unrelated?"

"Could be."

"Ok… so… do you want to elaborate on that at all?"

House exhaled a deep sigh, closing his eyes and kneading his forehead with the hand that wasn't holding a brown-tinged bottle. "We were in the same band… for a while. I played, sang a little… she sang a lot, played some bass…" he trailed off, taking a lingering swig of his beer to buy himself some time. Wilson's best friend probably never would have revealed even that much if he were sober, and he hesitated to leak any more information for fear of other, far more deeply held secrets intertwined in his distant past coming to light.

Wilson quirked an eyebrow. "Your whole demeanor is suspiciously… _pensive _right now. Are you trying to tell me you two were actually a _thing_ back then?"

"Define thing."

"Did you collaborate on anything besides _music_?"

"Maybe."

"Were you wearing clothes during the collaborating?"

"Not necessarily…" Wilson's jaw nearly hit the floor after that revelation. "Ok, not _usually_. There was a lot of _not_ wearing clothes involved where she and I were concerned in those days."

"I can't believe you never told me any of this before…" the oncologist shook his head incredulously.

"I can't believe I'm telling you now," murmured House cantankerously, tipping his head back to polish off the last of his beer. "Too much of this stuff," he added, shaking his now empty bottle for effect, "has caused my tongue to loosen past the point of no return, apparently."

"So all of this back and forth between the two of you, all this time… didn't just have potential. It had history… _a lot _of history," Wilson mused. "Do you really think it's a good idea for you and Cuddy to go back down this path? I mean, you haven't told me much, but I'm guessing based on the many years I've had to observe you circling each other like two feral cats that whatever there was between you didn't end well." House didn't respond immediately, but his face told Wilson everything he needed to know on the matter.

The D.J. once again demonstrated his impeccable timing in saving House from conversations he did not currently want to have with Wilson when he came over the P.A. to declare, "Aaaaand we're back! And we need… Lisa… to come on up and give us a 'piece of her heart' with some Janis Joplin!"

Cuddy was drawn instantly from her conversation with Amber and Thirteen at the sound of her name. Unlike the other doctors from Princeton-Plainsborough who had already taken the stage that evening, however, its Dean of Medicine showed not even a hint of apprehension as she readied herself to step up to the mic. Though she was, in fact, quite nervous, years of going up against adversarial hospital board members, fastidious donors, and egotistical employees gave her constant practice in the art of maintaining her cool under stress.

Pulling a nondescript black hairband out of her designer handbag, Cuddy checked out of the corner of her eye to see if the D.J.'s announcement had focused House's attention on her; naturally, it had. Feeling a bit devious, she made a thoroughly exaggerated point of giving her curly brown hair a few enticing tosses before gathering it back into an impromptu ponytail that achieved an intentionally orchestrated messiness. While walking toward the stage, she made sure to brush up against House just as accidentally as he had her on his trip to the washroom, her butt grazing against his good leg.

"Sorry," she uttered offhandedly over her shoulder, sounding anything but. At this point, House turned back to Wilson to give a delayed answer to his question.

"You want to know if that path is a good idea?" House repeated, indicating Cuddy with head. "Probably not. But I've never really been much of one for having 'good ideas' when it comes to dealing with other people… specifically, ones that look… and feel… and _sound_… as good naked as she does."

"Ok, I definitely could have lived without hearing that last part."

"Oh, _sorry_… I forgot I might offend your feminine sensibilities."

Wilson merely narrowed his eyes at his friend and then shifted his attention to Cuddy's position at center stage. He noticed immediately that she looked completely at home there, much as she did addressing a lecture hall full of prestigious doctors or at the head of the boardroom table. Easily commanding the attention of a room full of pleasantly buzzed drunks when she was used to a much tougher audience, Cuddy prepared herself to sing by grabbing onto the mic, stationary in its stand for the time being, with both hands. She nodded to the D.J. with a confident smile, and the twangy reverberations of a psychedelic guitar riff heralded the famous vocal bellow that would begin the song.

In no time at all, the nearly dozen doctors that House had railroaded into Saturday night karaoke at Beasly's learned exactly how lucky the majority of them had been to sing before their Dean of Medicine. Cuddy was able to channel the plaintive, yet powerful timbre of Janis Joplin right off the bat while still making the song distinctly her own. And once she navigated thought the dynamic give and take of the first verse, all of her previous anxiety melted away. No longer was she the impeccably composed, second youngest ever dean of a U.S. hospital; she was transported back in time, owning a piece of a tiny stage in a dive-bar somewhere in eastern Michigan with her larger-than-life presence. She was _Lisa_.

And _Lisa_ caught the deeply cerulean eyes of _Greg_ as she was begging the invisible Gods of music to give her back just a tiny piece of her own heart, which she had never quite regained after the two of them had parted ways. There it was again; twenty years later, but the eye sex as evident now as it ever was. House was definitely at least halfway to tanked, because all the members of his team, Wilson, and Amber witnessed him outrightly grinning at Cuddy's performance.

Whether consciously or not, she began to play herself right into her former lover's figurative hands, taking the mic out of the stand and holding it closer to her mouth. Wilson sat on the edge of his tall chair, his head going back and forth between his two friends as they executed their own version of psychological badminton; from the look of things, he was less concerned about the taking of hearts and more concerned with the two of them taking off clothes as soon as Cuddy's feet descended the stage.

For his part, House did nothing to disguise the fact that he was mentally undressing his very ex-girlfriend; he was too entranced by the effects of the unexpected emotional wormhole stemming from the magnetic blast from the past that Cuddy was perpetrating on the stage. She had held him in the palm of her hand as soon as she belted out the first syllables of the famous chorus, but Cuddy sealed the deal when she crouched effectively near the edge of the stage and tellingly delivered, "But each time I tell myself that I, well I can't stand the pain. But when you hold me in your arms, I'll sing it once again…"

Essentially, that sentiment summed up the pair's entire relationship. No matter the amount of abuse or heartache that one had suffered at the hand of the other over the years, they would eventually overlook their respective transgressions in order to remain together in some convoluted way, shape, or form. In recent years, an unconventional, if mostly stable professional affiliation had assured their presence in each other's daily existence. Always a trying feat, maintaining their slippery slope of equilibrium had taken a great deal of surreptitious effort on both doctors' parts. On that fateful night at karaoke in a bar in Princeton, New Jersey, however, House's initial bold invitation to participate in Battle of the Band-AIDS and Cuddy's passionate interpretation of a four minute song blew said equilibrium cleanly out of the river of their constantly ebbing and flowing dynamic.

Finishing the song with the flair of one who seemed born to perform, Cuddy took a triumphant stance at center stage with the mic pointed over her head like a sword readied to lead a battle. The applause that met her ending easily eclipsed the ovations received by any of her co-workers, and the Princeton-Plainsborough tables brought the loudest and most enthusiastic cheers of anyone in Beasley's. While the usually un-emotive Forman and Amber actually applauded and yelled along with the rest of the group, House's reaction was the most anticipated and also the most surprising. With a smile that was wide enough to show teeth for a brief moment, he was actually _clapping _for Cuddy.

After taking a minute to bask in the response of the crowd, Cuddy beamed and waved her thanks before finally disembarking the stage to rejoin her friends. Seeming oblivious to everyone except House, the dean confidently strutted right up to her best sparring partner. His unguarded smile had faded to a more acceptable smirk, and his previously clapping hands were now crossed in a distancing gesture across his middle. Unintimidated, Cuddy stood directly in front of him with her hands on her hips, cocking her head playfully to the side and arching an eyebrow at him.

Without saying a word, House stood up from the barstool and held his hand up in front of himself expectantly. Cuddy rolled her eyes with a silent laugh and tried, unsuccessfully, to take him up on the apparently insincere offer of a high five when he started to move his hand around and out of the way each time she tried to hit it. She should have seemed frustrated, but Cuddy just continued to giggle when House held his hand as high over his head as he possibly could. Not giving up, the petite brunette jumped as high as her impractical stilettos would permit but still couldn't reach the rough palm at the end of the diagnostician's outstretched arm. Finally, House grabbed Cuddy around the waist with his still lowered left arm and lifted her clear off the ground until her smaller hand could make contact with his larger one.

Afterwards they both continued to snicker in an way that was completely alien to all those in their company, her hands coming to rest on House's shoulders while his right arm joined his left around the small of her back like it had always belonged there. A few of the neighboring tables busted the former couple's bubbled reincarnation of the past with a few catcalls and whistles at the presumed publicly affectionate display, though, and the two distracted doctors quickly remembered that they were not indeed in their own little world.

House took on a bewildered expression at noticing the confusion of his team, both past and present, with the addition of Wilson and Amber, while Cuddy's sudden fidgeting gave the impression of embarrassment. Sharing one last fleeting glance before allowing the moment to disintegrate, House produced something between a cough and a grunt, and Cuddy gingerly slid back down the length of House's body until her head was out of the clouds and her spiked heels were back on the ground. Immediately they separated, awkwardly looking in opposite directions like two middle-schoolers at their first dance.

"I'm… going to go get another drink," Cuddy announced hurriedly and took off in the direction of the bar. Amber, who had been watching the goings on with calculated interest, followed after her shortly.

"Come on!" she said under her breath to a still shell-shocked Cameron, grabbing her wrist and dragging her along on her newest fact-finding mission.

As the newest members of the fold, Kutner, Taub and Thirteen remained where they were, chatting with quiet amusement amidst the noise of the venue about what they had just witnessed. Wilson, Forman, and Chase, however, could not let the anomaly in House and Cuddy's abnormally normal manner of interaction slide. While House, now seated, absently rubbed his thigh from the recent, but strangely pleasant strain of her weight, they made their way to stand in front of him, all crossing their arms in a similarly interrogatory fashion.

"Care to explain _that_?" ventured a liquidly courageous Chase.

**A/N: What to hear me ramble about Huddy, my writing and maybe some other random stuff? Great! Go like my Facebook writing page... search for "Vast Difference" :-)**


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